Farmers of Forty Centuries...these oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty We desired to learn how it is possible,

Farmers of Forty CenturiesF. H. King

Table of ContentsFarmers of Forty Centuries......................................................................................................................................1

F. H. King.......................................................................................................................................................1PREFACE......................................................................................................................................................1INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................................2I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN..................................................................................................................8II. GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA.................................................................................................................13III. TO HONGKONG AND CANTON.......................................................................................................16IV. UP THE SI−KIANG, WEST RIVER....................................................................................................21V. EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS..........................................25VI. SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE..............................................................................31VII. THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS...............................................36VIII. TRAMPS AFIELD..............................................................................................................................44IX. THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE........................................................................................................50X. IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE........................................................................................................58XI. ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE............................................................................71XII. RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT....................................................................................................73XIII. SILK CULTURE................................................................................................................................82XIV. THE TEA INDUSTRY.......................................................................................................................84XV. ABOUT TIENTSIN.............................................................................................................................86XVI. MANCHURIA AND KOREA...........................................................................................................91XVII. RETURN TO JAPAN.....................................................................................................................101

Farmers of Forty Centuries

i


F. H. King

This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

PREFACE• INTRODUCTION• I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN• II. GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA• III. TO HONGKONG AND CANTON• IV. UP THE SI−KIANG, WEST RIVER• V. EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS• VI. SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE• VII. THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS• VIII. TRAMPS AFIELD• IX. THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE• X. IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE• XI. ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE• XII. RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT• XIII. SILK CULTURE• XIV. THE TEA INDUSTRY• XV. ABOUT TIENTSIN• XVI. MANCHURIA AND KOREA• XVII. RETURN TO JAPAN•

This eBook was created by Steve Solomon (www.soilandhealth.org) and Charles Aldarondo ([email protected]).

FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIESORPERMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, KOREA AND JAPANByF. H. KING, D. Sc.1911

PREFACE

By DR. L. H. BAILEY.

We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tilling of the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is thebottom condition of civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agencies that make for the final conquestof the planet, we must assuredly know how it is that all the peoples in all the places have met the problem ofproducing their sustenance out of the soil.

Farmers of Forty Centuries 1

We have had few great agricultural travelers and few books that describe the real and significant rural conditions.Of natural history travel we have had very much; and of accounts of sights and events perhaps we have had toomany. There are, to be sure, famous books of study and travel in rural regions, and some of them, as ArthurYoung's "Travels in France," have touched social and political history; but for the most part, authorship ofagricultural travel is yet undeveloped. The spirit of scientific inquiry must now be taken into this field, and allearth−conquest must be compared and the results be given to the people that work.

This was the point of view in which I read Professor King's manuscript. It is the writing of a well−trainedobserver who went forth not to find diversion or to depict scenery and common wonders, but to study the actualconditions of life of agricultural peoples. We in North America are wont to think that we may instruct all theworld in agriculture, because our agricultural wealth is great and our exports to less favored peoples have beenheavy; but this wealth is great because our soil is fertile and new, and in large acreage for every person. We havereally only begun to farm well. The first condition of farming is to maintain fertility. This condition the orientalpeoples have met, and they have solved it in their way. We may never adopt particular methods, but we can profitvastly by their experience. With the increase of personal wants in recent time. the newer countries may neverreach such density of population as have Japan and China; but we must nevertheless learn the first lesson in theconservation of natural resources, which are the resources of the land. This is the message that Professor Kingbrought home from the East.

This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishing understanding between the West and the East. Ifthere could be such an interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as is suggested by Professor King,as well as the interchange of athletics and diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on both sidesshould gain much that they could use; and the results in amity should be incalculable.

It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have lived to write the concluding "Message of China and Japanto the World." It would have been a careful and forceful summary of his study of eastern conditions. At themoment when the work was going to the printer, he was called suddenly to the endless journey and his travel herewas left incomplete. But he bequeathed us a new piece of literature, to add to his standard writings on soils and onthe applications of physics and devices to agriculture. Whatever he touched he illuminated.

INTRODUCTION

A word of introduction is needed to place the reader at the best view point from which to consider what is said inthe following pages regarding the agricultural practices and customs of China, Korea and Japan. It should beborne in mind that the great factors which today characterize, dominate and determine the agricultural and otherindustrial operations of western nations were physical impossibilities to them one hundred years ago, and untilthen had been so to all people.

It should be observed, too, that the United States as yet is a nation of but few people widely scattered over a broadvirgin land with more than twenty acres to the support of every man, woman and child, while the people whosepractices are to be considered are toiling in fields tilled more than three thousand years and who have scarcelymore than two acres per capita,* more than one−half of which is uncultivable mountain land.

*[Footnote: This figure was wrongly stated in the first edition as one acre, owing to a mistake in confusing thearea of cultivated land with total area.]

Again, the great movement of cargoes of feeding stuffs and mineral fertilizers to western Europe and to theeastern United States began less than a century ago and has never been possible as a means of maintaining soilfertility in China, Korea or Japan, nor can it be continued indefinitely in either Europe or America. Theseimportations are for the time making tolerable the waste of plant food materials through our modern systems of


INTRODUCTION 2

sewage disposal and other faulty practices; but the Mongolian races have held all such wastes, both urban andrural, and many others which we ignore, sacred to agriculture, applying them to their fields.

We are to consider some of the practices of a virile race of some five hundred millions of people who have anunimpaired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired through four thousand years; a people morally andintellectually strong, mechanically capable, who are awakening to a utilization of all the possibilities whichscience and invention during recent years have brought to western nations; and a people who have long dearlyloved peace but who can and will fight in self defense if compelled to do so.

We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese farmers; to walk through their fields and tolearn by seeing some of their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress and experience have ledthese oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirtyor even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such densepopulations as are living now in these three countries. We have now had this opportunity and almost every day wewere instructed, surprised and amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever way weturned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these nations for centuries have been and are conserving andutilizing their natural resources, surprised at the magnitude of the returns they are getting from their fields, andamazed at the amount of efficient human labor cheerfully given for a daily wage of five cents and their food, orfor fifteen cents, United States currency, without food.

The three main islands of Japan in 1907 had a population of 46,977,003 maintained on 20,000 square miles ofcultivated field. This is at the rate of more than three people to each acre, and of 2,349 to each square mile; andyet the total agricultural imports into Japan in 1907 exceeded the agricultural exports by less than one dollar percapita. If the cultivated land of Holland is estimated at but one−third of her total area, the density of herpopulation in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one−third that of Japan in her three main islands. At the same timeJapan is feeding 69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring animals, to each square mile of cultivated field, whilewe were feeding in 1900 but 30 horses and mules per same area, these being our laboring animals.

As coarse food transformers Japan was maintaining 16,500,000 domestic fowl, 825 per square mile, but only onefor almost three of her people. We were maintaining, in 1900, 250,600,000 poultry, but only 387 per square mileof cultivated field and yet more than three for each person. Japan's coarse food transformers in the form of swine,goats and sheep aggregated but 13 to the square mile and provided but one of these units for each 180 of herpeople while in the United States in 1900 there were being maintained, as transformers of grass and coarse graininto meat and milk, 95 cattle, 99 sheep and 72 swine per each square mile of improved farms. In this reckoningeach of the cattle should be counted as the equivalent of perhaps five of the sheep and swine, for the transformingpower of the dairy cow is high. On this basis we are maintaining at the rate of more than 646 of the Japanese unitsper square mile, and more than five of these to every man, woman and child, instead of one to every 180 of thepopulation, as is the case in Japan.

Correspondingly accurate statistics are not accessible for China but in the Shantung province we talked with afarmer having 12 in his family and who kept one donkey, one cow, both exclusively laboring animals, and twopigs on 2.5 acres of cultivated land where he grew wheat, millet, sweet potatoes and beans. Here is a density ofpopulation equal to 3,072 people, 256 donkeys, 256 cattle and 512 swine per square mile. In another instancewhere the holding was one and two−thirds acres the farmer had 10 in his family and was maintaining one donkeyand one pig, giving to this farm land a maintenance capacity of 3,840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs to thesquare mile, or 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs to one of our forty−acre farms which our farmers regard toosmall for a single family. The average of seven Chinese holdings which we visited and where we obtained similardata indicates a maintenance capacity for those lands of 1,783 people, 212 cattle or donkeys and 399swine,−−1,995 consumers and 399 rough food transformers per square mile of farm land. These statements forChina represent strictly rural populations. The rural population of the United States in 1900 was placed at the rateof 61 per square mile of improved farm land and there were 30 horses and mules. In Japan the rural population


INTRODUCTION 3

had a density in 1907 of 1,922 per square mile, and of horses and cattle together 125.

The population of the large island of Chungming in the mouth of the Yangtse river, having an area of 270 squaremiles, possessed, according to the official census of 1902, a density of 3,700 per square mile and yet there was butone large city on the island, hence the population is largely rural.

It could not be other than a matter of the highest industrial, educational and social importance to all nations ifthere might be brought to them a full and accurate account of all those conditions which have made it possible forsuch dense populations to be maintained so largely upon the products of Chinese, Korean and Japanese soils.Many of the steps, phases and practices through which this evolution has passed are irrevocably buried in the pastbut such remarkable maintenance efficiency attained centuries ago and projected into the present with littleapparent decadence merits the most profound study and the time is fully ripe when it should be made. Living aswe are in the morning of a century of transition from isolated to cosmopolitan national life when profoundreadjustments, industrial, educational and social, must result, such an investigation cannot be made too soon. It ishigh time for each nation to study the others and by mutual agreement and co−operative effort, the results of suchstudies should become available to all concerned, made so in the spirit that each should become coordinate andmutually helpful component factors in the world's progress.

One very appropriate and immensely helpful means for attacking this problem, and which should prove mutuallyhelpful to citizen and state, would be for the higher educational institutions of all nations, instead of exchangingcourtesies through their baseball teams, to send select bodies of their best students under competent leadershipand by international agreement, both east and west, organizing therefrom investigating bodies each containingcomponents of the eastern and western civilization and whose purpose it should be to study specifically setproblems. Such a movement well conceived and directed, manned by the most capable young men, should createan international acquaintance and spread broadcast a body of important knowledge which would develop as theyoung men mature and contribute immensely toward world peace and world progress. If some broad plan ofinternational effort such as is here suggested were organized the expense of maintenance might well be met bydiverting so much as is needful from the large sums set aside for the expansion of navies for such steps as these,taken in the interests of world uplift and world peace, could not fail to be more efficacious and less expensive thanincrease in fighting equipment. It would cultivate the spirit of pulling together and of a square deal rather than oneof holding aloof and of striving to gain unneighborly advantage.

Many factors and conditions conspire to give to the farms and farmers of the Far East their high maintenanceefficiency and some of these may be succinctly stated. The portions of China, Korea and Japan where densepopulations have developed and are being maintained occupy exceptionally favorable geographic positions so faras these influence agricultural production. Canton in the south of China has the latitude of Havana, Cuba, whileMukden in Manchuria, and northern Honshu in Japan are only as far north as New York city, Chicago andnorthern California. The United States lies mainly between 50 degrees and 30 degrees of latitude while these threecountries lie between 40 degrees and 20 degrees, some seven hundred miles further south. This difference ofposition, giving them longer seasons, has made it possible for them to devise systems of agriculture whereby theygrow two, three and even four crops on the same piece of ground each year. In southern China, in Formosa and inparts of Japan two crops of rice are grown; in the Chekiang province there may be a crop of rape, of wheat orbarley or of windsor beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by another of cotton or of rice. In theShantung province wheat or barley in the winter and spring may be followed in summer by large or small millet,sweet potatoes, soy beans or peanuts. At Tientsin, 39 deg north, in the latitude of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, andSpringfield, Illinois, we talked with a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on his small holding with one ofonions and the onions with cabbage, realizing from the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per acre; and withanother who planted Irish potatoes at the earliest opportunity in the spring, marketing them when small, andfollowing these with radishes, the radishes with cabbage, realizing from the three crops at the rate of $203 peracre.


INTRODUCTION 4

Nearly 500,000,000 people are being maintained, chiefly upon the products of an area smaller than the improvedfarm lands of the United States. Complete a square on the lines drawn from Chicago southward to the Gulf andwestward across Kansas, and there will be enclosed an area greater than the cultivated fields of China, Korea andJapan and from which five times our present population are fed.

The rainfall in these countries is not only larger than that even in our Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls moreexclusively during the summer season when its efficiency in crop production may be highest. South China has arainfall of some 80 inches with little of it during the winter, while in our southern states the rainfall is nearer 60inches with less than one−half of it between June and September. Along a line drawn from Lake Superior throughcentral Texas the yearly precipitation is about 30 inches but only 16 inches of this falls during the months May toSeptember; while in the Shantung province, China, with an annual rainfall of little more than 24 inches, 17 ofthese fall during the months designated and most of this in July and August. When it is stated that under the besttillage and with no loss of water through percolation, most of our agricultural crops require 300 to 600 tons ofwater for each ton of dry substance brought to maturity, it can be readily understood that the right amount ofavailable moisture, coming at the proper time, must be one of the prime factors of a high maintenance capacity forany soil, and hence that in the Far East, with their intensive methods, it is possible to make their soils yield largereturns.

The selection of rice and of the millets as the great staple food crops of these three nations, and the systems ofagriculture they have evolved to realize the most from them, are to us remarkable and indicate a grasp ofessentials and principles which may well cause western nations to pause and reflect.

Notwithstanding the large and favorable rainfall of these countries, each of the nations have selected the one cropwhich permits them to utilize not only practically the entire amount of rain which falls upon their fields, but inaddition enormous volumes of the run−off from adjacent uncultivable mountain country. Wherever paddy fieldsare practicable there rice is grown. In the three main islands of Japan 56 per cent of the cultivated fields, 11,000square miles, is laid out for rice growing and is maintained under water from transplanting to near harvest time,after which the land is allowed to dry, to be devoted to dry land crops during the balance of the year, where theseason permits.

To anyone who studies the agricultural methods of the Far East in the field it is evident that these people,centuries ago, came to appreciate the value of water in crop production as no other nations have. They haveadapted conditions to crops and crops to conditions until with rice they have a cereal which permits the mostintense fertilization and at the same time the ensuring of maximum yields against both drought and flood. Withthe practice of western nations in all humid climates, no matter how completely and highly we fertilize, in moreyears than not yields are reduced by a deficiency or an excess of water.

It is difficult to convey, by word or map, an adequate conception of the magnitude of the systems of canalizationwhich contribute primarily to rice culture. A conservative estimate would place the miles of canals in China atfully 200,000 and there are probably more miles of canal in China, Korea and Japan than there are miles ofrailroad in the United States. China alone has as many acres in rice each year as the United States has in wheatand her annual product is more than double and probably threefold our annual wheat crop, and yet the whole ofthe rice area produces at least one and sometimes two other crops each year.

The selection of the quick−maturing, drought−resisting millets as the great staple food crops to be grownwherever water is not available for irrigation, and the almost universal planting in hills or drills, permittingintertillage, thus adopting centuries ago the utilization of earth mulches in conserving soil moisture, has enabledthese people to secure maximum returns in seasons of drought and where the rainfall is small. The millets thrivein the hot summer climates; they survive when the available soil moisture is reduced to a low limit, and they growvigorously when the heavy rains come. Thus we find in the Far East, with more rainfall and a better distributionof it than occurs in the United States, and with warmer, longer seasons, that these people have with rare wisdom


INTRODUCTION 5

combined both irrigation and dry farming methods to an extent and with an intensity far beyond anything ourpeople have ever dreamed, in order that they might maintain their dense populations.

Notwithstanding the fact that in each of these countries the soils are naturally more than ordinarily deep,inherently fertile and enduring, judicious and rational methods of fertilization are everywhere practiced; but notuntil recent years, and only in Japan, have mineral commercial fertilizers been used. For centuries, however, allcultivated lands, including adjacent hill and mountain sides, the canals, streams and the sea have been made tocontribute what they could toward the fertilization of cultivated fields and these contributions in the aggregatehave been large. In China, in Korea and in Japan all but the inaccessible portions of their vast extent of mountainand hill lands have long been taxed to their full capacity for fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure andcompost material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of all of the lumber used at home finds its wayultimately to the fields as fertilizer.

In China enormous quantities of canal mud are applied to the fields, sometimes at the rate of even 70 and moretons per acre. So, too, where there are no canals, both soil and subsoil are carried into the villages and therebetween the intervals when needed they are, at the expense of great labor, composted with organic refuse andoften afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back and used on the fields as home−made fertilizers.Manure of all kinds, human and animal, is religiously saved and applied to the fields in a manner which securesan efficiency far above our own practices. Statistics obtained through the Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, place theamount of human waste in that country in 1908 at 23,950,295 tons, or 1.75 tons per acre of her cultivated land.The International Concession of the city of Shanghai, in 1908, sold to a Chinese contractor the privilege ofentering residences and public places early in the morning of each day in the year and removing the night soil,receiving therefor more than $31,000, gold, for 78,000 tons of waste. All of this we not only throw away butexpend much larger sums in doing so.

Japan's production of fertilizing material, regularly prepared and applied to the land annually, amounts to morethan 4.5 tons per acre of cultivated field exclusive of the commercial fertilizers purchased. Between Shanhaikwanand Mukden in Manchuria we passed, on June 18th, thousands of tons of the dry highly nitrified compost soilrecently carried into the fields and laid down in piles where it was waiting to be "fed to the crops."

It was not until 1888, and then after a prolonged war of more than thirty years, generaled by the best scientists ofall Europe, that it was finally conceded as demonstrated that leguminous plants acting as hosts for lowerorganisms living on their roots are largely responsible for the maintenance of soil nitrogen, drawing it directlyfrom the air to which it is returned through the processes of decay. But centuries of practice had taught the FarEast farmers that the culture and use of these crops are essential to enduring fertility, and so in each of the threecountries the growing of legumes in rotation with other crops very extensively for the express purpose offertilizing the soil is one of their old, fixed practices.

Just before, or immediately after the rice crop is harvested, fields are often sowed to "clover" (Astragalus sinicus)which is allowed to grow until near the next transplanting time when it is either turned under directly, or moreoften stacked along the canals and saturated while doing so with soft mud dipped from the bottom of the canal.After fermenting twenty or thirty days it is applied to the field. And so it is literally true that these old worldfarmers whom we regard as ignorant, perhaps because they do not ride sulky plows as we do, have long includedlegumes in their crop rotation, regarding them as indispensable.

Time is a function of every life process as it is of every physical, chemical and mental reaction. The husbandmanis an industrial biologist and as such is compelled to shape his operations so as to conform with the timerequirements of his crops. The oriental farmer is a time economizer beyond all others. He utilizes the first and lastminute and all that are between. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always long on time, never in afret, never in a hurry. This is quite true and made possible for the reason that they are a people who definitely settheir faces toward the future and lead time by the forelock. They have long realized that much time is required to


INTRODUCTION 6

transform organic matter into forms available for plant food and although they are the heaviest users in the world,the largest portion of this organic matter is predigested with soil or subsoil before it is applied to their fields, andat an enormous cost of human time and labor, but it practically lengthens their growing season and enables themto adopt a system of multiple cropping which would not otherwise be possible. By planting in hills and rows withintertillage it is very common to see three crops growing upon the same field at one time, but in different stages ofmaturity, one nearly ready to harvest one just coming up, and the other at the stage when it is drawing mostheavily upon the soil. By such practice, with heavy fertilization, and by supplemental irrigation when needful, thesoil is made to do full duty throughout the growing season.

Then, notwithstanding the enormous acreage of rice planted each year in these countries, it is all set in hills andevery spear is transplanted. Doing this, they save in many ways except in the matter of human labor, which is theone thing they have in excess. By thoroughly preparing the seed bed, fertilizing highly and giving the most carefulattention, they are able to grow on one acre, during 30 to 50 days, enough plants to occupy ten acres and in themean time on the other nine acres crops are maturing, being harvested and the fields being fitted to receive therice when it is ready for transplanting, and in effect this interval of time is added to their growing season.

Silk culture is a great and, in some ways, one of the most remarkable industries of the Orient. Remarkable for itsmagnitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China at least 2700 years B. C.; for having been laidon the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than 4000 years, expandinguntil a million−dollar cargo of the product has been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special fastexpress to the cast for the Christmas trade.

A low estimate of China's production of raw silk would be 120,000,000 pounds annually, and this with the outputof Japan, Korea and a small area of southern Manchuria, would probably exceed 150,000,000 pounds annually,representing a total value of perhaps $700,000,000, quite equaling in value the wheat crop of the United States,but produced on less than one−eighth the area of our wheat fields.

The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great industries of these nations, taking rank with thatof sericulture if not above it in the important part it plays in the welfare of the people. There is little reason todoubt that this industry has its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable for drinkingpurposes. The drinking of boiled water is universally adopted in these countries as an individually available andthoroughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly disease germs which thus far it has been impossible toexclude from the drinking water of any densely peopled country.

Judged by the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus far instituted, and taking into consideration theinherent difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing populations, it appears inevitable thatmodern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety can be secured only in somemanner having the equivalent effect of boiling drinking water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races.

In the year 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land in tea plantations, producing 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea. InChina the volume annually produced is much larger than that of Japan, 40,000,000 pounds going annually toTibet alone from the Szechwan province and the direct export to foreign countries was, in 1905, 176,027,255pounds, and in 1906 it was 180,271,000, so that their annual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a totalannual output more than double this amount of cured tea.

But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than all of them combined in contributing to the high maintenanceefficiency attained in these countries must be placed the standard of living to which the industrial classes havebeen compelled to adjust themselves, combined with their remarkable industry and with the most intenseeconomy they practice along every line of effort and of living.


INTRODUCTION 7

Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material for food, fuel or fabric. Everything which can be madeedible serves as food for man or domestic animals. Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is used for fuel. The wastesof the body, of fuel and of fabric worn beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they arehoused against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence and forethought and patiently labored withthrough one, three or even six months, to bring them into the most efficient form to serve as manure for the soil oras feed for the crop. It seems to be a golden rule with these industrial classes, or if not golden, then an inviolableone, that whenever an extra hour or day of labor can promise even a little larger return then that shall be given,and neither a rainy day nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to cancel the obligation or defer its execution.

I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN

We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai, China, sailing by the northern route, at one P. M. Februarysecond, reaching Yokohama February 19th and Shanghai, March 1st. It was our aim throughout the journey tokeep in close contact with the field and crop problems and to converse personally, through interpreters orotherwise, with the farmers, gardeners and fruit growers themselves; and we have taken pains in many cases tovisit the same fields or the same region two, three or more times at different intervals during the season in order toobserve different phases of the same cultural or fertilization methods as these changed or varied with the season.

Our first near view of Japan came in the early morning of February 19th when passing some three miles off thepoint where the Pacific passenger steamer Dakota was beached and wrecked in broad daylight without loss of lifetwo years ago. The high rounded hills were clothed neither in the dense dark forest green of Washington andVancouver, left sixteen days before, nor yet in the brilliant emerald such as Ireland's hills in June fling inunparalleled greeting to passengers surfeited with the dull grey of the rolling ocean. This lack of strong forestgrowth and even of shrubs and heavy herbage on hills covered with deep soil, neither cultivated nor sufferingfrom serious erosion, yet surrounded by favorable climatic conditions, was our first great surprise.

To the southward around the point, after turning northward into the deep bay, similar conditions prevailed, and atten o'clock we stood off Uraga where Commodore Perry anchored on July 8th, 1853, bearing to the ShogunPresident Fillmore's letter which opened the doors of Japan to the commerce of the world and, it is to be hopedbrought to her people, with their habits of frugality and industry so indelibly fixed by centuries of inheritance,better opportunities for development along those higher lines destined to make life still more worth living.

As the Tosa Maru drew alongside the pier at Yokohama it was raining hard and this had attired an army after themanner of Robinson Crusoe, dressed as seen in Fig. 1, ready to carry you and yours to the Customs house andbeyond for one, two, three or five cents. Strong was the contrast when the journey was reversed and we descendedthe gang plank at Seattle, where no one sought the opportunity of moving baggage.

Through the kindness of Captain Harrison of the Tosa Maru in calling an interpreter by wireless to meet thesteamer, it was possible to utilize the entire interval of stop in Yokohama to the best advantage in the fields andgardens spread over the eighteen miles of plain extending to Tokyo, traversed by both electric tram and railwaylines, each running many trains making frequent stops; so that this wonderfully fertile and highly tilled districtcould be readily and easily reached at almost any point.

We had left home in a memorable storm of snow, sleet and rain which cut out of service telegraph and telephonelines over a large part of the United States; we had sighted the Aleutian Islands, seeing and feeling nothing on theway which could suggest a warm soil and green fields, hence our surprise was great to find the jinricksha menwith bare feet and legs naked to the thighs, and greater still when we found, before we were outside the citylimits, that the electric tram was running between fields and gardens green with wheat, barley, onions, carrots,cabbage and other vegetables. We were rushing through the Orient with everything outside the car so strange anddifferent from home that the shock came like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky.


I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN 8

In the car every man except myself and one other was smoking tobacco and that other was inhaling camphorthrough an ivory mouthpiece resembling a cigar holder closed at the end. Several women, tiring of sitting foreignstyle, slipped off−−I cannot say out of−−their shoes and sat facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them onthe seat. The streets were muddy from the rain and everybody Japanese was on rainy−day wooden shoes, the solescarried three to four inches above the ground by two cross blocks, in the manner seen in Fig. 2. A mother, withbaby on her back and a daughter of sixteen years came into the car. Notwithstanding her high shoes the motherhad dipped one toe into the mud. Seated, she slipped her foot off. Without evident instructions the prettyblack−eyed, glossy−haired, red−lipped lass, with cheeks made rosy, picked up the shoe, withdrew a piece ofwhite tissue paper from the great pocket in her sleeve, deftly cleaned the otherwise spotless white cloth sock andthen the shoe, threw the paper on the floor, looked to see that her fingers were not soiled, then set the shoe at hermother's foot, which found its place without effort or glance.

Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with the speed of the wildest dream. Now it was driving pilesfor the foundation of a bridge. A tripod of poles was erected above the pile and from it hung a pulley. Over thepulley passed a rope from the driving weight and from its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In acircle at the foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese women. They were the hoisting engine. They chanted inperfect rhythm, hauled and stepped, dropped the weight and hoisted again, making up for heavier hammer andhigher drop by more blows per minute. When we reached Shanghai we saw the pile driver being worked fromabove. Fourteen Chinese men stood upon a raised staging, each with a separate cord passing direct from the handto the weight below. A concerted, half−musical chant, modulated to relieve monotony, kept all hands together.What did the operation of this machine cost? Thirteen cents, gold, per man per day, which covered fuel andlubricant, both automatically served. Two additional men managed the piles, two directed the hammer, eighteenmanned the outfit. Two dollars and thirty−four cents per day covered fuel, superintendence and repairs. There wasalmost no capital invested in machinery. Men were plenty and to spare. Rice was the fuel, cooked without salt,boiled stiff, reinforced with a hit of pork or fish, appetized with salted cabbage or turnip and perhaps two or threeof forty and more other vegetable relishes. And are these men strong and happy? They certainly were strong.They are steadily increasing their millions, and as one stood and watched them at their work their faces were oftenwreathed in smiles and wore what seemed a look of satisfaction and contentment.

Among the most common sights on our rides from Yokohama to Tokyo, both within the city and along the roadsleading to the fields, starting early in the morning, were the loads of night soil carried on the shoulders of men andon the backs of animals, but most commonly on strong carts drawn by men, bearing six to ten tightly coveredwooden containers holding forty, sixty or more pounds each. Strange as it may seem, there are not today andapparently never have been, even in the largest and oldest cities of Japan, China or Korea, anything correspondingto the hydraulic systems of sewage disposal used now by western nations. Provision is made for the removal ofstorm waters but when I asked my interpreter if it was not the custom of the city during the winter months todischarge its night soil into the sea, as a quicker and cheaper mode of disposal, his reply came quick and sharp,"No, that would be waste. We throw nothing away. It is worth too much money." In such public places as rail waystations provision is made for saving, not for wasting, and even along the country roads screens invite the travelerto stop, primarily for profit to the owner more than for personal convenience.

Between Yokohama and Tokyo along the electric car line and not far distant from the seashore, there were to beseen in February very many long, fence−high screens extending east and west, strongly inclined to the north, andbuilt out of rice straw, closely tied together and supported on bamboo poles carried upon posts of wood set in theground. These screens, set in parallel series of five to ten or more in number and several hundred feet long, wereused for the purpose of drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being spread out in the manner shown in Fig. 3.

The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve inch straw mats, forming a thin layer seven by eightinches. These mats are held by means of wooden skewers forced through the body of the screen, exposing theseaweed to the direct sunshine. After becoming dry the rectangles of seaweed are piled in bundles an inch thick,cut once in two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are neatly tied and thus exposed for sale as soup



stock and for other purposes. To obtain this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and the limbs of trees are set upin the bottom of shallow water, as seen in Fig. 4. To these limbs the seaweeds become attached, grow to maturityand are then gathered by hand. By this method of culture large amounts of important food stuff are grown for thesupport of the people on areas otherwise wholly unproductive.

Another rural feature, best shown by photograph taken in February, is the method of training pear orchards inJapan, with their limbs tied down upon horizontal over−bead trellises at a height under which a man can readilywalk erect and easily reach the fruit with the hand while standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form arborsof greater or less size, the trees being set in quincunx order about twelve feet apart in and between the rows.Bamboo poles are used overhead and these carried on posts of the same material 1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter, towhich they are tied. Such a pear orchard is shown in Fig. 5.

The limbs of the pear trees are trained strictly in one plane, tying them down and pruning out those not desired.As a result the ground beneath is completely shaded and every pear is within reach, which is a great conveniencewhen it becomes desirable to protect the fruit from insects, by tying paper bags over every pear as seen in Figs. 6and 7. The orchard ground is kept free from weeds and not infrequently is covered with a layer of rice or otherstraw, extensively used in Japan as a ground cover with various crops and when so used is carefully laid inhandfuls from bundles, the straws being kept parallel as when harvested.

To one from a country of 160−acre farms, with roads four rods wide; of cities with broad streets and residenceswith green lawns and ample back yards; and where the cemeteries are large and beautiful parks, the first days oftravel in these old countries force the over−crowding upon the attention as nothing else can. One feels that thecities are greatly over−crowded with houses and shops, and these with people and wares; that the country isover−crowded with fields and the fields with crops; and that in Japan the over−crowding is greatest of all in thecemeteries, gravestones almost touching and markers for families literally in bundles at a grave, while roundabout there may be no free country whatever, dwellings, gardens or rice paddies contesting the tiny allotted areastoo closely to leave even foot−paths between.

Unless recently modified through foreign influence the streets of villages and cities are narrow, as seen in Fig. 8,where however the street is unusually broad. This is a village in the Hakone district on a beautiful lake of thesame name, where stands an Imperial summer palace, seen near the center of the view on a hill across the lake.The roofs of the houses here are typical of the neat, careful thatching with rice straw, very generally adopted inplace of tile for the country villages throughout much of Japan. The shops and stores, open full width directlyupon the street, are filled to overflowing, as seen in Fig. 9 and in Fig. 22.

In the canalized regions of China the country villages crowd both banks of a canal, as is the case in Fig. 10. Here,too, often is a single street and it very narrow, very crowded and very busy. Stone steps lead from the housesdown into the water where clothing, vegetables, rice and what not are conveniently washed. In this particularvillage two rows of houses stand on one side of the canal separated by a very narrow street, and a single row onthe other. Between the bridge where the camera was exposed and one barely discernible in the background,crossing the canal a third of a mile distant, we counted upon one side, walking along the narrow street, eightyhouses each with its family, usually of three generations and often of four. Thus in the narrow strip, 154 feetbroad, including 16 feet of street and 30 feet of canal, with its three lines of houses. lived no less than 240 familiesand more than 1200 and probably nearer 2000 people.

When we turn to the crowding of fields in the country nothing except seeing can tell so forcibly the fact as suchlandscapes as those of Figs. 11, 12 and 13, one in Japan, one in Korea and one in China, not far from Nanking,looking from the hills across the fields to the broad Yangtse kiang, barely discernible as a band of light along thehorizon.



The average area of the rice field in Japan is less than five square rods and that of her upland fields only abouttwenty. In the case of the rice fields the small size is necessitated partly by the requirement of holding water onthe sloping sides of the valley, as seen in Fig. 11. These small areas do not represent the amount of land workedby one family, the average for Japan being more nearly 2.5 acres. But the lands worked by one family are seldomcontiguous, they may even be widely scattered and very often rented.

The people generally live in villages, going often considerable distances to their work. Recognizing the greatdisadvantage of scattered holdings broken into such small areas, the Japanese Government has passed laws for theadjustment of farm lands which have been in force since 1900. It provides for the exchange of lands; for changingboundaries; for changing or abolishing roads, embankments, ridges or canals and for alterations in irrigation anddrainage which would ensure larger areas with channels and roads straightened, made less numerous and lesswasteful of time, labor and land. Up to 1907 Japan had issued permits for the readjustment of over 240,000 acres,and Fig. 14 is a landscape in one of these readjusted districts. To provide capable experts for planning andsupervising these changes the Government in 1905 intrusted the training of men to the higher agricultural schoolbelonging to the Dai Nippon Agricultural Association and since 1906 the Agricultural College and theKogyokusha have undertaken the same task and now there are men sufficient to push the work as rapidly asdesired.

It may be remembered, too, as showing how, along other fundamental lines, Japan is taking effective steps toimprove the condition of her people, that she already has her Imperial highways extending from one province toanother; her prefectural roads which connect the cities and villages within the prefecture; and those more localwhich serve the farms and villages. Each of the three systems of roads is maintained by a specific tax levied forthe purpose which is expended under proper supervision, a designated section of road being kept in repair throughthe year by a specially appointed crew, as is the practice in railroad maintenance. The result is, Japan has roadsmaintained in excellent condition, always narrow, sacrificing the minimum of land, and everywhere withoutfences.

How the fields are crowded with crops and all available land is made to do full duty in these old, long−tilledcountries is evident in Fig. 15 where even the narrow dividing ridges but a foot wide, which retain the water onthe rice paddies, are bearing a heavy crop of soy beans; and where may be seen the narrow pear orchard standingon the very slightest rise of ground, not a foot above the water all around, which could better be left in grading thepaddies to proper level.

How closely the ground itself may be crowded with plants is seen in Fig. 16, where a young peach orchard, whosetree tops were six feet through, planted in rows twenty−two feet apart, had also ten rows of cabbage, two rows oflarge windsor beans and a row of garden peas. Thirteen rows of vegetables in 22 feet, all luxuriant and strong, andnote the judgment shown in placing the tallest plants, needing the most sun, in the center between the trees.

But these old people, used to crowding and to being crowded, and long ago capable of making four blades ofgrass grow where Nature grew but one, have also learned how to double the acreage where a crop needs moreelbow than it does standing room, as seen in Fig. 17. This man's garden had an area of but 63 by 68 feet and twosquare rods of this was held sacred to the family grave mound, and yet his statement of yields, number of cropsand prices made his earning $100 a year on less than one−tenth of an acre.

His crop of cucumbers on less than .06 of an acre would bring him $20. He had already sold $5 worth of greensand a second crop would follow the cucumbers. He had just irrigated his garden from an adjoining canal, using afoot−power pump, and stated that until it rained he would repeat the watering once per week. It was his wife whostood in the garden and, although wearing trousers, her dress showed full regard for modesty.

But crowding crops more closely in the field not only requires higher feeding to bring greater returns, but alsorelatively greater care, closer watchfulness in a hundred ways and a patience far beyond American measure; and



so, before the crowding of the crops in the field and along with it, there came to these very old farmers a crowdingof the grey matter in the brain with the evolution of effective texture. This is shown in his fields which crowd thelandscape. It is seen in the crops which crowd his fields. You see it in the old man's face, Fig. 18, standingopposite his compeer, Prince Ching, Fig. 19, each clad in winter dress which is the embodiment of conversation,retaining the fires of the body for its own needs, to release the growth on mountain sides for other uses. And whenone realizes how, nearly to the extreme limits, conservation along all important lines is being practiced as aninherited instinct, there need be no surprise when one reflects that the two men, one as feeder and the other asleader, are standing in the fore of a body of four hundred millions of people who have marched as a nationthrough perhaps forty centuries, and who now, in the light and great promise of unfolding science have their facesset toward a still more hopeful and longer future.

On February 21st the Tosa Maru left Yokohama for Kobe at schedule time on the tick of the watch, as she haddone from Seattle. All Japanese steamers appear to be moved with the promptness of a railway train. On reachingKobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru which sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reachingShanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into the country between Kobe and Osaka, where we found, ifpossible, even higher and more intensive culture practices than on the Tokyo plain, there being less land notcarrying a winter crop. And Fig. 20 shows how closely the crops crowd the houses and shops. Here were verymany cement lined cisterns or sheltered reservoirs for collecting manures and preparing fertilizers and theappearance of both soil and crops showed in a marked manner to what advantage. We passed a garden of nearlyan acre entirely devoted to English violets just coming into full bloom. They were grown in long parallel east andwest beds about three feet wide. On the north edge of each bed was erected a rice−straw screen four feet highwhich inclined to the south, overhanging the bed at an angle of some thirty−five degrees, thus forming a sort ofbake−oven tent which reflected the sun, broke the force of the wind and checked the loss of heat absorbed by thesoil.

The voyage from Kobe to Moji was made between 10 in the morning, February 24th, and 5 .30 P. M. of February25th over a quiet sea with an enjoyable ride. Being fogbound during the night gave us the whole of Japan'sbeautiful Inland Sea, enchanting beyond measure, in all its near and distant beauty but which no pen, no brush, nocamera may attempt. Only the eye can convey. Before reaching harbor the tide had been rising and the straitseparating Honshu from Kyushu island was running like a mighty swirling river between Moji and Shimonoseki,dangerous to attempt in the dark, so we waited until morning.

There was cargo to take on board and the steamer must coal. No sooner had the anchor dropped and the steamerswung into the current than lighters came alongside with out−going freight. The small, strong, agile Japanesestevedores had this task completed by 8:30 P. M. and when we returned to the deck after supper another scenewas on. The cargo lighters had gone and four large barges bearing 250 tons of coal had taken their places onopposite sides of the steamer, each illuminated with buckets of blazing coal or by burning conical heaps on thesurface. From the bottom of these pits in the darkness the illumination suggested huge decapitated ant heaps in thewildest frenzy, for the coal seemed covered and there was hurry in every direction. Men and women, boys andgirls, bending to their tasks, were filling shallow saucer−shaped baskets with coal and stacking them eight to tenhigh in a semi−circle, like coin for delivery. Rising out of these pits sixteen feet up the side of the steamer andalong her deck to the chutes leading to her bunkers were what seemed four endless human chains, in service theprototype of our modern conveyors, but here each link animated by its own power. Up these conveyors the loadedbuckets passed, one following another at the rate of 40 to 60 per minute, to return empty by the descending line,and over the four chains one hundred tons per hour, for 250 tons of coal passed to the bunkers in two and a halfhours. Both men and women stood in the line and at the upper turn of one of these, emptying the buckets downthe chute, was a mother with her two−year−old child in the sling on back, where it rocked and swayed to and fro,happy the entire time. It was often necessary for the mother to adjust her baby in the sling whenever it wasleaning uncomfortably too far to one side or the other, but she did it skillfully, always with a shrug of theshoulders, for both hands were full. The mother looked strong, was apparently accepting her lot as a matter ofcourse and often, with a smile, turned her face to the child, who patted it and played with her ears and hair.



Probably her husband was doing his part in a more strenuous place in the chain and neither had time to betroubled with affinities for it was 10:30 P. M. when the baskets stopped, and somewhere no doubt there was ahome to be reached and perhaps supper to get. Shall we be able, when our numbers have vastly increased, topermit all needful earnings to be acquired in a better way?

We left Moji in the early morning and late in the evening of the same day entered the beautiful harbor ofNagasaki, all on board waiting until morning for a launch to go ashore. We were to sail again at noon so availabletime for observation was short and we set out in a ricksha at once for our first near view of terraced gardening onthe steep hillsides in Japan. In reaching them and in returning our course led through streets paved with long,thick and narrow stone blocks, having deep open gutters on one or both sides close along the houses, into whichwaste water was emptied and through which the storm waters found their way to the sea. Few of these streetswere more than twelve feet wide and close watching, with much dodging, was required to make way throughthem. Here, too, the night soil of the city was being removed in closed receptacles on the shoulders of men, on thebacks of horses and cattle and on carts drawn by either. Other men and women were hurrying along with basketsof vegetables well illustrated in Fig. 21, some with fresh cabbage, others with high stacks of crisp lettuce, somewith monstrous white radishes or turnips, others with bundles of onions, all coming down from the terracedgardens to the markets. We passed loads of green bamboo poles just cut, three inches in diameter at the butt andtwenty feet long, drawn on carts. Both men and women were carrying young children and older ones were playingand singing in the street. Very many old women, some feeble looking, moved, loaded, through the throng.Homely little dogs, an occasional lean cat, and hens and roosters scurried across the street from one low market orstore to another. Back of the rows of small stores and shops fronting on the clean narrow streets were thedwellings whose exits seemed to open through the stores, few or no open courts of any size separating them fromthe market or shop. The opportunity which the oriental housewife may have in the choice of vegetables on goingto the market, and the attractive manner of displaying such products in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22.

We finally reached one of the terraced hillsides which rise five hundred to a thousand feet above the harbor withsides so steep that garden areas have a width of seldom more than twenty to thirty feet and often less, while thefront of each terrace may be a stone wall, sometimes twelve feet high, often more than six, four and five feetbeing the most common height. One of these hillside slopes is seen in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are bothshort and narrow and most of them bounded by stone walls on three sides, suggesting house foundations, the twoend walls sloping down the hill from the height of the back terrace, dropping to the ground level in front, theseforming foot−paths leading up the slope occasionally with one, two or three steps in places.

Each terrace sloped slightly down the hill at a small angle and had a low ridge along the front. Around its entireborder a narrow drain or furrow was arranged to collect surface water and direct it to drainage channels or into acatch basin where it might be put back on the garden or be used in preparing liquid fertilizer. At one corner ofmany of these small terraced gardens were cement lined pits, used both as catch basins for water and asreceptacles for liquid manure or as places in which to prepare compost. Far up the steep paths, too, along eitherside, we saw many piles of stable manure awaiting application, all of which had been brought up the slopes inbackets on bamboo poles, carried on the shoulders of men and women.

II. GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA

The launch had returned the passengers to the steamer at 11:30; the captain was on the bridge; prompt to theminute at the call "Hoist away" the signal went below and the Yamaguchi's whistle filled the harbor andover−flowed the hills. The cable wound in, and at twelve, noon, we were leaving Nagasaki, now a city of 153,000and the western doorway of a nation of fifty−one millions of people but of little importance before the sixteenthcentury when it became the chief mart of Portuguese trade. We were to pass the Koreans on our right and enterthe portals of a third nation of four hundred millions. We had left a country which had added eighty−five millionsto its population in one hundred years and which still has twenty acres for each man, woman and child, to pass


II. GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA 13

through one which has but one and a half acres per capita, and were going to another whose allotment of acres,good and bad, is less than 2.4. We had gone from practices by which three generations had exhausted strongvirgin fields, and were coming to others still fertile after thirty centuries of cropping. On January 30th we crossedthe head waters of the Mississippi−Missouri, four thousand miles from its mouth, and on March 1st were in themouth of the Yangtse river whose waters are gathered from a basin in which dwell two hundred millions ofpeople.

The Yamaguchi reached Woosung in the night and anchored to await morning and tide before ascending theHwangpoo, believed by some geographers to be the middle of three earlier delta arms of the Yangtse kiang, thesouthern entering the sea at Hangchow 120 miles further south, the third being the present stream. As we woundthrough this great delta plain toward Shanghai, the city of foreign concessions to all nationalities, the first strikingfeature was the "graves of the fathers", of "the ancestors". At first the numerous grass−covered hillocks dottingthe plain seemed to be stacks of grain or straw; then came the query whether they might not be huge compostheaps awaiting distribution in the fields, but as the river brought us nearer to them we seemed to be movingthrough a land of ancient mound builders and Fig. 24 shows, in its upper section, their appearance as seen in thedistance.

As the journey led on among the fields, so large were the mounds, often ten to twelve feet high and twenty ormore feet at the base; so grass−covered and apparently neglected; so numerous and so irregularly scattered,without apparent regard for fields, that when we were told these were graves we could not give credence to thestatement, but before the city was reached we saw places where, by the shifting of the channel, the river had cutinto some of these mounds, exposing brick vaults, some so low as to be under water part of the time, and wewonder if the fact does not also record a slow subsidence of the delta plain under the ever increasing load of riversilt.

A closer view of these graves in the same delta plain is given in the lower section of Fig. 24, where they are seenin the midst of fields and to occupy not only large areas of valuable land but to be much in the way of agriculturaloperations. A still closer view of other groups, with a farm village in the background, is shown in the middlesection of the same illustration, and here it is better seen how large is the space occupied by them. On the right inthe same view may be seen a line of six graves surmounting a common lower base which is a type of the largerand higher ones so suggestive of buildings seen in the horizon of the upper section.

Everywhere we went in China, about all of the very old and large cities, the proportion of grave land to cultivatedfields is very large. In the vicinity of Canton Christian college, on Honam island, more than fifty per cent of theland was given over to graves and in many places they were so close that one could step from one to another.They are on the higher and dryer lands, the cultivated areas occupying ravines and the lower levels to which watermay be more easily applied and which are the most productive. Hilly lands not so readily cultivated, andespecially if within reach of cities, are largely so used, as seen in Fig. 25, where the graves are marked byexcavated shelves rather than by mounds, as on the plains. These grave lands are not altogether unproductive forthey are generally overgrown with herbage of one or another kind and used as pastures for geese, sheep, goats andcattle, and it is not at all uncommon, when riding along a canal, to see a huge water buffalo projected against thesky from the summit of one of the largest and highest grave mounds within reach. If the herbage is not fed off byanimals it is usually cut for feed, for fuel, for green manure or for use in the production of compost to enrich thesoil.

Caskets may be placed directly upon the surface of a field, encased in brick vaults with tile roofs, forming suchclusters as was seen on the bank of the Grand Canal in Chekiang province, represented in the lower section of Fig.26, or they may stand singly in the midst of a garden, as in the upper section of the same figure; in a rice paddyentirely surrounded by water parts of the year, and indeed in almost any unexpected place. In Shanghai in 1898,2,763 exposed coffined corpses were removed outside the International Settlement or buried by the authorities.



Further north, in the Shantung province, where the dry season is more prolonged and where a severe drought hadmade grass short, the grave lands had become nearly naked soil, as seen in Fig. 27 where a Shantung farmer hadjust dug a temporary well to irrigate his little field of barley. Within the range of the camera, as held to take thisview, more than forty grave mounds besides the seven near by, are near enough to be fixed on the negative and bediscernible under a glass, indicating what extensive areas of land, in the aggregate, are given over to graves.

Still further north, in Chihli, a like story is told in, if possible, more emphatic manner and fully vouched for in thenext illustration, Fig. 28, which shows a typical family group, to be observed in so many places between Taku andTientsin and beyond toward Peking. As we entered the mouth of the Pei−ho for Tientsin, far away to thevanishing horizon there stretched an almost naked plain except for the vast numbers of these "graves of thefathers", so strange, so naked, so regular in form and so numerous that more than an hour of our journey hadpassed before we realized that they were graves and that the country here was perhaps more densely peopled withthe dead than with the living. In so many places there was the huge father grave, often capped with what in thedistance suggested a chimney, and the many associated smaller ones, that it was difficult to realize in passingwhat they were.

It is a common custom, even if the residence has been permanently changed to some distant province, to take thebodies back for interment in the family group; and it is this custom which leads to the practice of choosing atemporary location for the body, waiting for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This is oftenthe occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and themany small stone jars containing skeletons of the dead, or portions of them, standing singly or in rows in the mostunexpected places least in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal to the final resting place.It is this custom, too, I am told, which has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of thecasket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective absorbent.

It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their heightand size, as is seen in the next two illustrations, and to decorate these once in the year with flying streamers ofcolored paper, the remnants of which may be seen in both Figs. 30 and 31, set there as tokens that the papermoney has been burned upon them and its essence sent up in the smoke for the maintenance of the spirits of theirdeparted friends. We have our memorial day; they have for centuries observed theirs with religious fidelity.

The usual expense of a burial among the working people is said to be $100, Mexican, an enormous burden whenthe day's wage or the yearly earning of the family is considered and when there is added to this the yearly expenseof ancestor worship. How such voluntary burdens are assumed by people under such circumstances is hard tounderstand. Missionaries assert it is fear of evil consequences in this life and of punishment and neglect in thehereafter that leads to assuming them. Is it not far more likely that such is the price these people are willing to payfor a good name among the living and because of their deep and lasting friendship for the departed? Nor does itseem at all strange that a kindly, warm−hearted people with strong filial affection should have reached, carry intheir long history, a belief in one spirit of the departed which hovers about the home, one which hovers about thegrave and another which wanders abroad, for surely there are associations with each of these conditions whichmust long and forcefully awaken memories of friends gone. If this view is possible may not such ancestralworship be an index of qualities of character strongly fixed and of the highest worth which, when improvementscome that may relieve the heavy burdens now carried, will only shine more brightly and count more for rightliving as well as comfort?

Even in our own case it will hardly be maintained that our burial customs have reached their best and finalsolution, for in all civilized nations they are unnecessarily expensive and far too cumbersome. It is only necessaryto mentally add the accumulation of a few centuries to our cemeteries to realize how impossible our practice mustbecome. Clearly there is here a very important line for betterment which all nationalities should undertake.



When the steamer anchored at Shanghai the day was pleasant and the rain coats which greeted us in Yokohamawere not in evidence but the numbers who had met the steamer in the hope of an opportunity for earning a triflewas far greater and in many ways in strong contrast with the Japanese. We were much surprised to find the menof so large stature, much above the Chinese usually seen in the United States. They were fully the equal of largeAmericans in frame but quite without surplus flesh yet few appeared underfed. To realize that these are strong,hardy men it was only necessary to watch them carrying on their shoulders bales of cotton between them,supported by a strong bamboo; while the heavy loads they transport on wheel−barrows through the country overlong distances, as seen in Fig. 32, prove their great endurance. This same type of vehicle, too, is one of thecommon means of transporting people, especially Chinese women, and four six and even eight may be seen ridingtogether, propelled by a single wheelbarrow man.

III. TO HONGKONG AND CANTON

We had come to learn how the old−world farmers bad been able to provide materials for food and clothing onsuch small areas for so many millions, at so low a price, during so many centuries, and were anxious to see themat the soil and among the crops. The sun was still south of the equator, coming north only about twelve miles perday, so, to save time, we booked on the next steamer for Hongkong to meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropicof Cancer, six hundred miles farther south, and return with her.

On the morning of March 4th the Tosa Maru steamed out into the Yangtse river, already flowing with theincreased speed of ebb tide. The pilots were on the bridge to guide her course along the narrow south channelthrough waters seemingly as brown and turbid as the Potomac after a rain. It was some distance beyond GutzlaffIsland, seventy miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a telegraph station receiving six cables, that wecrossed the front of the out−going tide, showing in a sharp line of contrast stretching in either direction fartherthan the eye could see, across the course of the ship and yet it was the season of low water in this river. Duringlong ages this stream of mighty volume has been loading upon itself in far−away Tibet, without dredge, barge,fuel or human effort, unused and there unusable soils, bringing them down from inaccessible heights across twoor three thousand miles, building up with them, from under the sea, at the gateways of commerce, miles uponmiles of the world's most fertile fields and gardens. Today on this river, winding through six hundred miles of themost highly cultivated fields, laid out on river−built plains, go large ocean steamers to the city ofHankow−Wuchang−Hanyang where 1,770,000 people live and trade within a radius less than four miles; whilesmaller steamers push on a thousand miles and are then but 130 feet above sea level.

Even now, with the aid of current, tide and man, these brown turbid waters are rapidly adding fertile delta plainsfor new homes. During the last twenty−five years Chungming island has grown in length some 1800 feet per yearand today a million people are living and growing rice, wheat, cotton and sweet potatoes on 270 square miles offertile plain where five hundred years ago were only submerged river sands and silt. Here 3700 people per squaremile have acquired homes.

The southward voyage was over a quiet sea and as we passed among and near the off−shore islands these, as seenin Japan, appeared destitute of vegetation other than the low herbaceous types with few shrubs and almost noforest growth and little else that gave the appearance of green. Captain Harrison informed me that at no time inthe year are these islands possessed of the grass−green verdure so often seen in northern climates, and yet theislands lie in a region of abundant summer rain, making it hard to understand why there is not a more luxuriantgrowth.

Sunday morning, March 7th, passing first extensive sugar refineries, found us entering the long, narrow andbeautiful harbor of Hongkong. Here, lying at anchor in the ten square miles of water, were five battleships,several large ocean steamers, many coastwise vessels and a multitude of smaller craft whose yearly tonnage istwenty to thirty millions. But the harbor lies in the track of the terrible East Indian typhoon and, although


III. TO HONGKONG AND CANTON 16

sheltered on the north shore of a high island, one of these storms recently sunk nine vessels, sent twenty−threeashore, seriously damaged twenty−one others, wrought great destruction among the smaller craft and over athousand dead were recovered. Such was the destruction wrought by the September storm of 1906.

Our steamer did not go to dock but the Nippon Yusen Kaisha's launch transferred us to a city much resemblingSeattle in possessing a scant footing between a long sea front and high steep mountain slopes behind. Here cliffstoo steep to climb rise from the very sidewalk and are covered with a great profusion and variety of ferns, smallbamboo, palms, vines, many flowering shrubs, all interspersed with pine and great banyan trees that do so muchtoward adding the beauty of northern landscapes to the tropical features which reach upward until hidden in a veilof fog that hung, all of the time we were there, over the city, over the harbor and stretched beyond Old and NewKowloon.

Hongkong island is some eleven miles long and but two to five miles wide, while the peak carrying the signalstaff rises 1,825 feet above the streets from which ascends the Peak tramway, where, hanging from opposite endsof a strong cable, one car rises up the slope and another descends every fifteen to twenty minutes, affordingcommunication with business houses below and homes in beautiful surroundings and a tempered climate above.Extending along the slopes of the mountains, too, above the city, are very excellent roads, carefully graded,provided with concrete gutters and bridges, along which one may travel on foot, on horseback, by ricksha orsedan chair, but too narrow for carriages. Over one of these we ascended along one side of Happy Valley, aroundits head and down the other side. Only occasionally could we catch glimpses of the summit through the lifting fogbut the views, looking down and across the city and beyond the harbor with its shipping, and up and down themany ravines from via−ducts, are among the choicest and rarest ever made accessible to the residents of any city.It was the beginning of the migratory season for birds, and trees and shrubbery thronged with many species.

Many of the women in Hongkong were seen engaged in such heavy manual labor with the men as carryingcrushed rock and sand, for concrete and macadam work, up the steep street slopes long distances from the dock,but they were neither tortured nor incapacitated by bound feet. Like the men, they were of smaller stature thanmost seen at Shanghai and closely resemble the Chinese in the United States. Both sexes are agile, wiry andstrong. Here we first saw lumber sawing in the open streets after the manner shown in Fig. 33, where wide boardswere being cut from camphor logs. In the damp, already warm weather the men were stripped to the waist, theirlimbs bare to above the knee, and each carried a large towel for wiping away the profuse perspiration.

It was here, too, that we first met the remarkable staging for the erection of buildings of four and six stories, set upwithout saw, hammer or nail; without injury to or waste of lumber and with the minimum of labor in constructionand removal. Poles and bamboo stems were lashed together with overlapping ends, permitting any interval orheight to be secured without cutting or nailing, and admitting of ready removal with absolutely no waste, all partsbeing capable of repeated use unless it be some of the materials employed in tying members. Up inclinedstairways, from staging to staging, in the erection of six−story granite buildings, mortar was being carried inbaskets swinging from bamboo poles on the shoulders of men and women, as the cheapest hoists available inEnglish Hongkong where there is willing human labor and to spare.

The Singer sewing machine, manufactured in New Jersey, was seen in many Chinese shops in Hongkong andother cities, operated by Chinese men and women, purchased, freight prepaid, at two−thirds the retail price in theUnited States. Such are the indications of profit to manufacturers on the home sale of home−made goods while atthe same time reaping good returns from a large trade in heathen lands, after paying the freight.

Industrial China, Korea and Japan do not observe our weekly day of rest and during our walk around HappyValley on Sunday afternoon, looking down upon its terraced gardens and tiny fields, we saw men and womenbusy fitting the soil for new crops, gathering vegetables for market, feeding plants with liquid manure and evenirrigating certain crops, notwithstanding the damp, foggy, showery weather. Turning the head of the valley,attention was drawn to a walled enclosure and a detour down the slope brought us to a florist's garden within



which were rows of large potted foliage plants of semi−shrubbery habit, seen in Fig. 35, trained in the form oflife−size human figures with limbs, arms and trunk provided with highly glazed and colored porcelain feet, handsand head. These, with many other potted plants and trees, including dwarf varieties, are grown under out−doorlattice shelters in different parts of China, for sale to the wealthy Chinese families.

How thorough is the tillage, how efficient and painstaking the garden fitting, and how closely the ground iscrowded to its upper limit of producing power are indicated in Fig. 36; and when one stops and studies the detailin such gardens he expects in its executor an orderly, careful, frugal and industrious man, getting not a littlesatisfaction out of his creations however arduous his task or prolonged his day. If he is in the garden or one meetshim at the house, clad as the nature of his duties and compensation have determined, you may be disappointed orfeel arising an unkind judgment. But who would risk a reputation so clad and so environed? Many were the times,during our walks in the fields and gardens among these old, much misunderstood, misrepresented andundervalued people, when the bond of common interest was recognized between us, that there showed throughthe face the spirit which put aside both dress and surroundings and the man stood forth who, with fortitude andrare wisdom, is feeding the millions and who has carried through centuries the terrible burden of taxes levied bydishonor and needless wars. Nay, more than this, the man stood forth who has kept alive the seeds of manhoodand has nourished them into such sturdy stock as has held the stream of progress along the best interests ofcivilization in spite of the driftwood heaped upon it.

Not only are these people extremely careful and painstaking in fitting their fields and gardens to receive the crop,but they are even more scrupulous in their care to make everything that can possibly serve as fertilizer for the soil,or food for the crop being grown, do so unless there is some more remunerative service it may render. Expense isincurred to provide such receptacles as are seen in Fig. 37 for receiving not only the night soil of the home andthat which may be bought or otherwise procured, but in which may be stored any other fluid which can serve asplant food. On the right of these earthenware jars too is a pile of ashes and one of manure. All such materials aresaved and used in the most advantageous ways to enrich the soil or to nourish the plants being grown.

Generally the liquid manures must be diluted with water to a greater or less extent before they are "fed", as theChinese say, to their plants, hence there is need of an abundant and convenient water supply. One of these is seenin Fig. 38, where the Chinaman has adopted the modern galvanized iron pipe to bring water from the mountainslope of Happy Valley to his garden. By the side of this tank are the covered pails in which the night soil wasbrought, perhaps more than a mile, to be first diluted and then applied. But the more general method for supplyingwater is that of leading it along the ground in channels or ditches to a small reservoir in one corner of a terracedfield or garden, as seen in Fig. 39, where it is held and the surplus led down from terrace to terrace, giving each itspermanent supply. At the upper right corner of the engraving may be seen two manure receptacles and a thirdstands near the reservoir. The plants on the lower terrace are water cress and those above the same. At this time ofthe year, on the terraced gardens of Happy Valley, this is one of the crops most extensively grown.

Walking among these gardens and isolated homes, we passed a pig pen provided with a smooth, well−laid stonefloor that had just been washed scrupulously clean, like the floor of a house. While I was not able to learn otherfacts regarding this case, I have little doubt that the washings from this floor had been carefully collected andtaken to some receptacle to serve as a plant food.

Looking backward as we left Hongkong for Canton on the cloudy evening of March 8th, the view waswonderfully beautiful. We were drawing away from three cities, one, electric−lighted Hongkong rising up thesteep slopes, suggesting a section of sky set with a vast array of stars of all magnitudes up to triple Jupiters;another, old and new Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbor; and between these two, separated from eithershore by wide reaches of wholly unoccupied water, lay the third, a mid−strait city of sampans, junks andcoastwise craft of many kinds segregated, in obedience to police regulation, into blocks and streets with eachsetting sun, but only to scatter again with the coming morn. At night, after a fixed hour, no one is permitted toleave shore and cross the vacant water strip except from certain piers and with the permission of the police, who



take the number of the sampan and the names of its occupants. Over the harbor three large search lights weresweeping and it was curious to see the junks and other craft suddenly burst into full blazes of light, like so manymonstrous fire−flies, to disappear and reappear as the lights came and went. Thus is the mid−strait city lightedand policed and thus have steps been taken to lessen the number of cases of foul play where people have left thewharves at night for some vessel in the strait, never to be heard from again.

Some ninety miles is the distance by water to Canton, and early the next morning our steamer dropped anchor offthe foreign settlement of Shameen. Through the kindness of Consul−General Amos P. Wilder in sending atelegram to the Canton Christian College, their little steam launch met the boat and took us directly to the home ofthe college on Honam Island, lying in the great delta south of the city where sediments brought by theSi−kiang−−west, Pei−kiang−−north, and Tung−kiang−−east−−rivers through long centuries have been buildingthe richest of land which, because of the density of population, are squared up everywhere to the water's edge andappropriated as fast as formed, and made to bring forth materials for food fuel and raiment in vast quantities.

It was on Honam Island that we walked first among the grave lands and came to know them as such, for CantonChristian College stands in the midst of graves which, although very old, are not permitted to be disturbed and thedevelopment of the campus must wait to secure permission to remove graves, or erect its buildings in places notthe most desirable. Cattle were grazing among the graves and with them a flock of some 250 of the brownChinese geese, two−thirds grown, was watched by boys, gleaning their entire living from the grave lands andadjacent water. A mature goose sells in Canton for $1.20, Mexican, or less than 52 cents, gold, but even then howcan the laborer whose day's wage is but ten or fifteen cents afford one for his family? Here, too, we saw theChinese persistent, never−ending industry in keeping their land, their sunshine and their rain, with themselves,busy in producing something needful. Fields which had matured two crops of rice during the long summer, hadbeen laboriously, and largely by hand labor, thrown into strong ridges as seen in Fig. 40, to permit still a thirdwinter crop of some vegetable to be taken from the land.

But this intensive, continuous cropping of the land spells soil exhaustion and creates demands for maintenanceand restoration of available plant food or the adding of large quantities of something quickly convertible into it,and so here in the fields on Honam Island, as we had found in Happy Valley, there was abundant evidence of themost careful attention and laborious effort devoted to plant feeding. The boat standing in the canal in Fig. 41 hadcome from Canton in the early morning with two tons of human manure and men were busy applying it, in dilutedform, to beds of leeks at the rate of 16,000 gallons per acre, all carried on the shoulders in such pails as stand inthe foreground. The material is applied with long−handled dippers holding a gallon, dipping it from the pails, themen wading, with bare feet and trousers rolled above the knees, in the water of the furrows between the beds. Thisis one of their ways of "feeding the crop," and they have other methods of "manuring the soil."

One of these we first met on Honam Island. Large amounts of canal mud are here collected in boats and broughtto the fields to be treated and there left to drain and dry before distributing. Both the material used to feed the cropand that used for manuring the land are waste products, hindrances to the industry of the region, but the Chinesemake them do essential duty in maintaining its life. The human waste must be disposed of. They return it to thesoil. We turn it into the sea. Doing so, they save for plant feeding more than a ton of phosphorus (2712 pounds)and more than two tons of potassium (4488 pounds) per day for each million of adult population. The mudcollects in their canals and obstructs movement. They must be kept open. The mud is highly charged with organicmatter and would add humus to the soil if applied to the fields, at the same time raising their level above the riverand canal, giving them better drainage; thus are they turning to use what is otherwise waste, causing the laborwhich must be expended in disposal to count in a remunerative way.

During the early morning ride to Canton Christian College and three others which we were permitted to enjoy inthe launch on the canal and river waters, everything was again strange, fascinating and full of human interest. TheCantonese water population was a surprise, not so much for its numbers as for the lithe, sinewy forms, bright eyesand cheerful faces, particularly among the women, young and old. Nearly always one or more women, mother and



daughter oftenest, grandmother many times, wrinkled, sometimes grey, but strong, quick and vigorous in motion,were manning the oars of junks, houseboats and sampans. Sometimes husband and wife and many times thewhole family were seen together when the craft was both home and business boat as well. Little children weregazing from most unexpected peek holes, or they toddled tethered from a waist belt at the end of as much rope aswould arrest them above water, should they go overboard. And the cat was similarly tied. Through anoverhanging latticed stern, too, hens craned their necks, longing for scenes they could not reach. With bare heads,bare feet, in short trousers and all dressed much alike, men, women, boys and girls showed equal mastery of theoar. Beginning so young, day and night in the open air on the tide−swept streams and canals, exposed to all of thesunshine the fogs and clouds will permit, and removed from the dust and filth of streets, it would seem that if thechildren survive at all they must develop strong. The appearance of the women somehow conveyed theimpression that they were more vigorous and in better fettle than the men.

Boats selling many kinds of steaming hot dishes were common. Among these was rice tied in green leaf wrappers,three small packets in a cluster suspended by a strand of some vegetable fiber, to be handed hot from the cookerto the purchaser, some one on a passing junk or on an in−coming or out−going boat. Another would buy hot waterfor a brew of tea, while still another, and for a single cash, might be handed a small square of cotton cloth, wrunghot from the water, with which to wipe his face and hands and then be returned.

Perhaps nothing better measures the intensity of the maintenance struggle here, and better indicates the minuteeconomies practiced, than the value of their smallest currency unit, the Cash, used in their daily retail transactions.On our Pacific coast, where less thought is given to little economies than perhaps anywhere else in the world, thenickel is the smallest coin in general use, twenty to the dollar. For the rest of the United States and in mostEnglish speaking countries one hundred cents or half pennies measure an equal value. In Russia 170 kopecks, inMexico 200 centavos, in France 250 two−centime pieces, and in Austria−Hungary 250 two−heller coins equal theUnited States dollar; while in Germany 400 pfennigs, and in India 400 pie are required for an equal value. Again500 penni in Finland and of stotinki in Bulgaria, of centesimi in Italy and of half cents in Holland equal ourdollar; but in China the small daily financial transactions are measured against a much smaller unit, their Cash,1500 to 2000 of which are required to equal the United States dollar, their purchasing power fluctuating daily withthe price of silver.

In the Shantung province, when we inquired of the farmers the selling prices of their crops, their replies weregiven like this: "Thirty−five strings of cash for 420 catty of wheat and twelve to fourteen strings of cash for 1000catty of wheat straw." At this time, according to my interpreter, the value of one string of cash was 40 centsMexican, from which it appears that something like 250 of these coins were threaded on a string. Twice we saw awheelbarrow heavily loaded with strings of cash being transported through the streets of Shanghai, lying exposedon the frame, suggesting chains of copper more than money. At one of the go−downs or warehouses in Tsingtao,where freight was being transferred from a steamer, the carriers were receiving their pay in these coin. Thepay−master stood in the doorway with half a bushel of loose cash in a grain sack at his feet. With one hand hereceived the bamboo tally−sticks from the stevedores and with the other paid the cash for service rendered.

Reference has been made to buying hot water. In a sampan managed by a woman and her daughter, who took usashore, the middle section of the boat was furnished in the manner of a tiny sitting−room, and on the sideboard satthe complete embodiment of our fireless cookers, keeping boiled water hot for making tea. This device and thecustom are here centuries old and throughout these countries boiled water, as tea, is the universal drink, adoptedno doubt as a preventive measure against typhoid fever and allied diseases. Few vegetables are eaten raw andnearly all foods are taken hot or recently cooked if not in some way pickled or salted. Houseboat meat shopsmove among the many junks on the canals. These were provided with a compartment communicating freely withthe canal water where the fish were kept alive until sold. At the street markets too, fish are kept alive in large tubsof water systematically aerated by the water falling from an elevated receptacle in a thin stream. A live fish mayeven be sliced before the eyes of a purchaser and the unsold portion returned to the water. Poultry is largelyretailed alive although we saw much of it dressed and cooked to a uniform rich brown, apparently roasted,



hanging exposed in the markets of the very narrow streets in Canton, shaded from the hot sun under awningsadmitting light overhead through translucent oyster−shell latticework. Perhaps these fowl had been cooked in hotoil and before serving would be similarly heated. At any rate it is perfectly clear that among these people manyvery fundamental sanitary practices are rigidly observed.

One fact which we do not fully understand is that, wherever we went, house flies were very few. We never spent asummer with so little annoyance from them as this one in China, Korea and Japan. It may be that our experiencewas exceptional but, if so, it could not be ascribed to the season of our visit for we have found flies so numerousin southern Florida early in April as to make the use of the fly brush at the table very necessary. If the scrupuloushusbanding of waste refuse so universally practiced in these countries reduces the fly nuisance and this menace tohealth to the extent which our experience suggests, here is one great gain. We breed flies in countless millionseach year, until they become an intolerable nuisance, and then expend millions of dollars on screens and flypoison which only ineffectually lessen the intensity and danger of the evil.

The mechanical appliances in use on the canals and in the shops of Canton demonstrate that the Chinese possessconstructive ability of a high order, notwithstanding so many of these are of the simplest forms. This statement iswell illustrated in the simple yet efficient foot−power seen in Fig. 42, where a father and his two sons are drivingan irrigation pump, lifting water at the rate of seven and a half acre−inches per ten hours, and at a cost, includingwage and food, of 36 to 45 cents, gold. Here, too, were large stern−wheel passenger boats, capable of carryingthirty to one hundred people, propelled by the same foot−power but laid crosswise of the stern, the men workingin long single or double lines, depending on the size of the boat. On these the fare was one cent, gold, for a fifteenmile journey, a rate one−thirtieth our two−cent railway tariff. The dredging and clearing of the canals and waterchannels in and about Canton is likewise accomplished with the same foot−power, often by families living on thedredge boats. A dipper dredge is used, constructed of strong bamboo strips woven into the form of a sliding,two−horse road scraper, guided by a long bamboo handle. The dredge is drawn along the bottom by a ropewinding about the projecting axle of the foot−power, propelled by three or more people. When the dipper reachesthe axle and is raised from the water it is swung aboard, emptied and returned by means of a long arm like the oldwell sweep, operated by a cord depending from the lower end of the lever, the dipper swinging from the other.Much of the mud so collected from the canals and channels of the city is taken to the rice and mulberry fields,many square miles of which occupy the surrounding country. Thus the channels are kept open, the fields growsteadily higher above flood level, while their productive power is maintained by the plant food and organic mattercarried in the sediment.

The mechanical principle involved in the boy's button buzz was applied in Canton and in many other places foroperating small drills as well as in grinding and polishing appliances used in the manufacture of ornamental ware.The drill, as used for boring metal, is set in a straight shaft, often of bamboo, on the upper end of which ismounted a circular weight. The drill is driven by a pair of strings with one end attached just beneath themomentum weight and the other fastened at the ends of a cross hand−bar, having a hole at its center throughwhich the shaft carrying the drill passes. Holding the drill in position for work and turning the shaft, the two cordsare wrapped about it in such a manner that simple downward pressure on the hand bar held in the two handsunwinds the cords and thus revolves the drill. Relieving the pressure at the proper time permits the momentum ofthe revolving weight to rewind the cords and the next downward pressure brings the drill again into service.

IV. UP THE SI−KIANG, WEST RIVER

On the morning of March 10th we took passage on the Nanning for Wuchow, in Kwangsi province, a journey of220 miles up the West river, or Sikiang. The Nanning is one of two English steamers making regular tripsbetween the two places, and it was the sister boat which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one ofher trips and all of the officers and first class passengers killed while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said,or the excuse for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods which had ruined the rice and


IV. UP THE SI−KIANG, WEST RIVER 21

mulberry crops of the great delta region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as fertilizers tothe tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus bringing ruin to three of the great staple crops of the region. To avoidthe recurrence of such tragedies the first class quarters on the Nanning had been separated from the rest of theship by heavy iron gratings thrown across the decks and over the hatchways. Armed guards stood at the lockedgateways, and swords were hanging from posts under the awnings of the first cabin quarters, much as saw and axin our passenger coaches. Both British and Chinese gunboats were patrolling the river; all Chinese passengerswere searched for concealed weapons as they came aboard, even though Government soldiers, and all arms takeninto custody until the end of the journey. Several of the large Chinese merchant junks which were passed,carrying valuable cargoes on the river, were armed with small cannon and when riding by rail from Canton toSam Shui, a government pirate detective was in our coach.

The Sikiang is one of the great rivers of China and indeed of the world. Its width at Wuchow at low water wasnearly a mile and our steamer anchored in twenty−four feet of water to a floating dock made fast by huge ironchains reaching three hundred feet up the slope to the city proper, thus providing for a rise of twenty−six feet inthe river at its flood stage during the rainy season. In a narrow section of river where it winds through Shui Hinggorge, the water at low stage has a depth of more than twenty−five fathoms, too deep for anchorage, so in times ofprospective fog, boats wait for clearing weather. Fluctuations in the height of the river limit vessels passing up toWuchow to those drawing six and a half feet of water during the low stage, and at high stage to those drawingsixteen feet.

When the West river emerges from the high lands, with its burden of silt, to join its waters with those of the Northand East rivers, it has entered a vast delta plain some eighty miles from east to west and nearly as many fromnorth to south, and this has been canalized, diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields,bearing three or more crops each year. As we passed westward through this delta region the broad flat fields,surrounded by dikes to protect them against high water, were being plowed and fitted for the coming crop of rice.In many places the dikes which checked off the fields were planted with bananas and in the distance gave theappearance of extensive orchards completely occupying the ground. Except for the water and the dikes it was easyto imagine that we were traversing one of our western prairie sections in the early spring, at seeding time, thescattered farm villages here easily suggested distant farmsteads; but a nearer approach to the houses showed thatthe roofs and sides were thatched with rice straw and stacks were very numerous about the buildings. Many tidegates were set in the dikes, often with double trunks.

At times we approached near enough to the fields to see how they were laid out. From the gates long canals, six toeight feet wide, led back sometimes eighty or a hundred rods. Across these and at right angles, head channelswere cut and between them the fields were plowed in long straight lands some two rods wide, separated by waterfurrows. Many of the fields were bearing sugar cane standing eight feet high. The Chinese do no sugar refiningbut boil the sap until it will solidify, when it is run into cakes resembling chocolate or our brown maple sugar.Immense quantities of sugar cane, too, are exported to the northern provinces, in bundles wrapped with matting orother cover, for the retail markets where it is sold, the canes being cut in short sections and sometimes peeled, tobe eaten from the hands as a confection.

Much of the way this water−course was too broad to permit detailed study of field conditions and crops, evenwith a glass. In such sections the recent dikes often have the appearance of being built from limestone blocks buta closer view showed them constructed from blocks of the river silt cut and laid in walls with slightly slopingfaces. In time however the blocks weather and the dikes become rounded earthen walls.

We passed two men in a boat, in charge of a huge flock of some hundreds of yellow ducklings. Anchored to thebank was a large houseboat provided with an all−around, over−hanging rim and on board was a stack of ricestraw and other things which constituted the floating home of the ducks. Both ducks and geese are reared in thismanner in large numbers by the river population. When it is desired to move to another feeding ground a gangplank is put ashore and the flock come on board to remain for the night or to be landed at another place.



About five hours journey westward in this delta plain, where the fields lie six to ten feet above the present waterstage, we reached the mulberry district. Here the plants are cultivated in rows about four feet apart, having thehabit of small shrubs rather than of trees, and so much resembling cotton that our first impression was that wewere in an extensive cotton district. On the lower lying areas, surrounded by dikes, some fields were laid out inthe manner of the old Italian or English water meadows, with a shallow irrigation furrow along the crest of thebed and much deeper drainage ditches along the division line between them. Mulberries were occupying theground before the freshly cut trenches we saw were dug, and all the surface between the rows had been evenlyoverlaid with the fresh earth removed with the spade, the soil lying in blocks essentially unbroken. In Fig. 43 maybe seen the mulberry crop on a similarly treated surface, between Canton and Samshui, with the earth removedfrom the trenches laid evenly over the entire surface between and around the plants, as it came from the spade.

At frequent intervals along the river, paths and steps were seen leading to the water and within a distance of aquarter of a mile we counted thirty−one men and women carrying mud in baskets on bamboo poles swung acrosstheir shoulders, the mud being taken from just above the water line. The disposition of this material we could notsee as it was carried beyond a rise in ground. We have little doubt that the mulberry fields were being coveredwith it. It was here that a rain set in and almost like magic the fields blossomed out with great numbers of giantrain hats and kittysols, where people had been unobserved before. From one o'clock until six in the afternoon wehad traveled continuously through these mulberry fields stretching back miles from our line of travel on eitherhand, and the total acreage must have been very large. But we had now nearly reached the margin of the delta andthe mulberries changed to fields of grain, beans, peas and vegetables.

After leaving the delta region the balance of the journey to Wuchow was through a hill country, the slopes risingsteeply from near the river bank, leaving relatively little tilled or readily tillable land. Rising usually five hundredto a thousand feet, the sides and summits of the rounded, soil−covered hills were generally clothed with a shortherbaceous growth and small scattering trees, oftenest pine, four to sixteen feet high, Fig. 44 being a typicallandscape of the region.

In several sections along the course of this river there are limited areas of intense erosion where naked gulleys ofno mean magnitude have developed but these were exceptions and we were continually surprised at theremarkable steepness of the slopes, with convexly rounded contours almost everywhere, well mantled with soil,devoid of gulleys and completely covered with herbaceous growth dotted with small trees. The absence of forestgrowth finds its explanation in human influence rather than natural conditions.

Throughout the hill−land section of this mighty river the most characteristic and persistent human features werethe stacks of brush−wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded upon boats and barges for themarket. The brush−wood was largely made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked like grain. Thestove wood was usually round, peeled and made from the limbs and trunks of trees two to five inches in diameter.All this fuel was coming to the river from the back country, sent down along steep slides which in the distanceresemble paths leading over hills but too steep for travel. The fuel was loaded upon large barges, the boughs in theform of stacks to shed rain but with a tunnel leading into the house of the boat about which they were stacked,while the wood was similarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44. The wood was going to Canton andother delta cities while the pine boughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many of which were locatedalong the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste ispermitted.

The up−river cargo of the Nanning was chiefly matting rush, taken on at Canton, tied in bundles like sheaves ofwheat. It is grown upon the lower, newer delta lands by methods of culture similar to those applied to rice, Fig. 45showing a field as seen in Japan.

The rushes were being taken to one of the country villages on a tributary of the Sikiang and the steamer was metby a flotilla of junks from this village, some forty−five miles up the stream, where the families live who do the



weaving. On the return trip the flotilla again met the steamer with a cargo of the woven matting. In keeping recordof packages transferred the Chinese use a simple and unique method. Each carrier, with his two bundles, receiveda pair of tally sticks. At the gang−plank sat a man with a tally−case divided into twenty compartments, each ofwhich could receive five, but no more, tallies. As the bundles left the steamer the tallies were placed in thetally−case until it contained one hundred, when it was exchanged for another.

Wuchow is a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, standing back on the higher ground, not readily visible from thesteamer landing nor from the approach on the river. On the foreground, across which stretched the anchor chainsof the dock, was living a floating population, many in shelters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engagedin a great variety of work, and many water buffalo had been tied for the night along the anchor chains. Before Julymuch of this area would lie beneath the flood waters of the Sikiang.

Here a ship builder was using his simple, effective bow−brace, boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking forhis ship, and another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow−brace consisted of a bamboo stalkcarrying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it wasdriven with the string of a long bow wrapped once around the stalk by drawing the bow back and forth, thusrapidly and readily revolving the bit.

The bending of the long, heavy plank, four inches thick and eight inches wide, was more simple still, It wassaturated with water and one end raised on a support four feet above the ground. A bundle of burning rice strawmoved along the under side against the wet wood had the effect of steaming the wood and the weight of the plankcaused it to gradually bend into the shape desired. Bamboo poles are commonly bent or straightened in thismanner to suit any need and Fig. 46 shows a wooden fork shaped in the manner described from a small treehaving three main branches. This fork is in the hands of my interpreter and was used by the woman standing atthe right, in turning wheat.

When the old ship builder had finished shaping his plank he sat down on the ground for a smoke. His pipe wasone joint of bamboo stem a foot long, nearly two inches in diameter and open at one end. In the closed end, at oneside, a small hole was bored for draft. A charge of tobacco was placed in the bottom, the lips pressed into the openend and the pipe lighted by suction, holding a lighted match at the small opening. To enjoy his pipe the bowlrested on the ground between his legs. With his lips in the bowl and a long breath, he would completely fill hislungs, retaining the smoke for a time, then slowly expire and fill the lungs again, after an interval of naturalbreathing.

On returning to Canton we went by rail, with an interpreter, to Samshui, visiting fields along the way, and Fig. 47is a view of one landscape. The woman was picking roses among tidy beds of garden vegetables. Beyond her andin front of the near building are two rows of waste receptacles. In the center background is a large "go−down", infunction that of our cold storage warehouse and in part that of our grain elevator for rice. In them, too, the wealthystore their fur−lined winter garments for safe keeping. These are numerous in this portion of China and the rankof a city is indicated by their number. The conical hillock is a large near−by grave mound and many others serratethe sky line on the hill beyond.

In the next landscape, Fig. 48, a crop of winter peas, trained to canes, are growing on ridges among the stubble ofthe second crop of rice, In front is one canal, the double ridge behind is another and a third canal extends in frontof the houses. Already preparations were being made for the first crop of rice, fields were being flooded andfertilized. One such is seen in Fig. 49, where a laborer was engaged at the time in bringing stable manure, wadinginto the water to empty the baskets.

Two crops of rice are commonly grown each year in southern China and during the winter and early spring, grain,cabbage, rape, peas, beans, leeks and ginger may occupy the fields as a third or even fourth crop, making the totalyear's product from the land very large; but the amount of thought, labor and fertilizers given to securing these is



even greater and beyond anything Americans will endure. How great these efforts are will be appreciated fromwhat is seen in Fig. 50, representing two fields thrown into high ridges, planted to ginger and covered with straw.All of this work is done by hand and when the time for rice planting comes every ridge will again be thrown downand the surface smoothed to a water level. Even when the ridges and beds are not thrown down for the crops ofrice, the furrows and the beds will change places so that all the soil is worked over deeply and mainly throughhand labor. The statement so often made, that these people only barely scratch the surface of their fields with thecrudest of tools is very far from the truth, for their soils are worked deeply and often, notwithstanding the fact thattheir plowing, as such, may be shallow.

Through Dr. John Blumann of the missionary hospital at Tungkun, east from Canton, we learned that the goodrice lands there a few years ago sold at $75 to $130 per acre but that prices are rising rapidly. The holdings of thebetter class of farmers there are ten to fifteen mow−−one and two−thirds to two and a half acres−−upon which aremaintained families numbering six to twelve. The day's wage of a carpenter or mason is eleven to thirteen cents ofour currency, and board is not included, but a day's ration for a laboring man is counted worth fifteen cents,Mexican, or less than seven cents, gold.

Fish culture is practiced in both deep and shallow basins, the deep permanent ones renting as high as $30 gold,per acre. The shallow basins which can be drained in the dry season are used for fish only during the rainy period,being later drained and planted to some crop. The permanent basins have often come to be ten or twelve feet deep,increasing with long usage, for they are periodically drained by pumping and the foot or two of mud which hasaccumulated, removed and sold as fertilizer to planters of rice and other crops. It is a common practice, too,among the fish growers, to fertilize the ponds, and in case a foot path leads alongside, screens are built over thewater to provide accommodation for travelers. Fish reared in the better fertilized ponds bring a higher price in themarket. The fertilizing of the water favors a stronger growth of food forms, both plant and animal, upon which thefish live and they are better nourished, making a more rapid growth, giving their flesh better qualities, as is thecase with well fed animals.

In the markets where fish are exposed for sale they are often sliced in halves lengthwise and the cut surfacesmeared with fresh blood. In talking with Dr. Blumann as to the reason for this practice he stated that the Chinesevery much object to eating meat that is old or tainted and that he thought the treatment simply had the effect ofmaking the fish look fresher. I question whether this treatment with fresh blood may not have a real antisepticeffect and very much doubt that people so shrewd as the Chinese would be misled by such a ruse.

V. EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS

On the evening of March 15th we left Canton for Hongkong and the following day embarked again on the TosaMaru for Shanghai. Although our steamer stood so far to sea that we were generally out of sight of land except forsome off−shore islands, the water was turbid most of the way after we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer off themouth of the Han river at Swatow. Over a sea bottom measuring more than six hundred miles northward along thecoast, and perhaps fifty miles to sea, unnumbered acre−feet of the richest soil of China are being borne beyond thereach of her four hundred millions of people and the children to follow them. Surely it must be one of the greattasks of future statesmanship, education and engineering skill to divert larger amounts of such sediments closealong inshore in such manner as to add valuable new land annually to the public domain, not alone in China but inall countries where large resources of this type are going to waste.

In the vast Cantonese delta plains which we had just left, in the still more extensive ones of the Yangtse kiang towhich we were now going, and in those of the shifting Hwang ho further north, centuries of toiling millions haveexecuted works of almost incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just suggested. Theyhave accomplished an enormous share of these tasks by sheer force of body and will, building levees, diggingcanals, diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then carrying the deposits of silt and organic


V. EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS 25

growth out upon the fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in the manner we have seen.

It is well nigh impossible, by word or map, to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the systems ofcanalization and delta and other lowland reclamation work, or of the extent of surface fitting of fields which havebeen effected in China, Korea and Japan through the many centuries, and which are still in progress. The lands soreclaimed and fitted constitute their most enduring asset and they support their densest populations. In one of ourjourneys by houseboat on the delta canals between Shanghai and Hangchow, in China, over a distance of 117miles, we made a careful record of the number and dimensions of lateral canals entering and leaving the main onealong which our boat−train was traveling. This record shows that in 62 miles, beginning north of Kashing andextending south to Hangchow, there entered from the west 134 and there left on the coast side 190 canals. Theaverage width of these canals, measured along the water line, we estimated at 22 and 19 feet respectively on thetwo sides. The height of the fields above the water level ranged from four to twelve feet, during the April andMay stage of water. The depth of water, after we entered the Grand Canal, often exceeded six feet and our bestjudgment would place the average depth of all canals in this part of China at more than eight feet below the levelof the fields.

In Fig. 51, representing an area of 718 square miles in the region traversed, all lines shown are canals, butscarcely more than one−third of those present are shown on the map. Between A, where we began our records,before reaching Kashing, and B, near the left margin of the map, there were forty−three canals leading in from theup−country side, instead of the eight shown, and on the coast side there were eighty−six leading water out into thedelta plain toward the coast, instead of the twelve shown. Again, on one of our trips by rail, from Shanghai toNanking, we made a similar record of the number of canals seen from the train, close along the track, and thenotes show, in a distance of 162 miles, 593 canals between Lungtan and Nansiang. This is an average of morethan three canals per mile for this region and that between Shanghai and Hangchow.

The extent, nature and purpose of these vast systems of internal improvement may be better realized through astudy of the next two sketch maps. The first, Fig. 52, represents an area 175 by 160 miles, of which the lastillustration is the portion enclosed in the small rectangle. On this area there are shown 2,700 miles of canals andonly about one−third of the canals shown in Fig. 51 are laid down on this map, and according to our personalobservations there are three times as many canals as are shown on the map of which Fig. 51 represents a part. It isprobable, therefore, that there exists today in the area of Fig. 52 not less than 25,000 miles of canals.

In the next illustration, Fig. 53, an area of northeast China, 600 by 725 miles, is represented. The unshaded landarea covers nearly 200,000 square miles of alluvial plain. This plain is so level that at Ichang, nearly a thousandmiles up the Yangtse, the elevation is only 130 feet above the sea. The tide is felt on the river to beyond Wuhu,375 miles from the coast. During the summer the depth of water in the Yangtse is sufficient to permit oceanvessels drawing twenty−five feet of water to ascend six hundred miles to Hankow, and for smaller steamers to goon to Ichang, four hundred miles further.

The location, in this vast low delta and coastal plain, of the system of canals already described, is indicated by thetwo rectangles in the south−east corner of the sketch map, Fig. 53. The heavy barred black line extending fromHangchow in the south to Tientsin in the north represents the Grand Canal which has a length of more than eighthundred miles. The plain, east of this canal, as far north as the mouth of the Hwang ho in 1852, is canalized muchas is the area shown in Fig. 52. So, too, is a large area both sides of the present mouth of the same river inShantung and Chihli, between the canal and the coast. Westward, up the Yangtse valley, the provinces of Anhwei,Kiangsi, Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive canalized tracts, probably exceeding 28,000 square miles in area,and Figs. 54 and 55 are two views in this more western region. Still further west, in Szechwan province, is theChengtu plain, thirty by seventy miles, with what has been called "the most remarkable irrigation system inChina."



Westward beyond the limits of the sketch map, up the Hwang ho valley, there is a reach of 125 miles of irrigatedlands about Ninghaifu, and others still farther west, at Lanchowfu and at Suchow where the river has attained anelevation of 5,000 feet, in Kansu province; and there is still to be named the great Canton delta region. Aconservative estimate would place the miles of canals and leveed rivers in China, Korea and Japan equal to eighttimes the number represented in Fig. 52. Fully 200,000 miles in all. Forty canals across the United States fromeast to west and sixty from north to south would not equal, in number of miles those in these three countriestoday. Indeed, it is probable that this estimate is not too large for China alone.

As adjuncts to these vast canalization works there have been enormous amounts of embankment, dike and leveeconstruction. More than three hundred miles of sea wall alone exist in the area covered by the sketch map, Fig.52. The east bank of the Grand Canal, between Yangchow and Hwaianfu, is itself a great levee, holding back thewaters to the west above the eastern plain, diverting them south, into the Yangtse kiang. But it is also providedwith spillways for use in times of excessive flood, permitting waters to discharge eastward. Such excess watershowever are controlled by another dike with canal along its west side, some forty miles to the east, impoundingthe water in a series of large lakes until it may gradually drain away. This area is seen in Fig. 53, north of theYangtse river.

Along the banks of the Yangtse, and for many miles along the Hwang ho, great levees have been built,some−times in reinforcing series of two or three at different distances back from the channel where the stream bedis above the adjacent country, in order to prevent widespread disaster and to limit the inundated areas in times ofunusual flood. In the province of Hupeh, where the Han river flows through two hundred miles of low country,this stream is diked on both sides throughout the whole distance, and in a portion of its course the height of thelevees reaches thirty feet or more. Again, in the Canton delta region there are other hundreds of miles of sea walland dikes, so that the aggregate mileage of this type of construction works in the Empire can only be measured inthousands of miles.

In addition to the canal and levee construction works there are numerous impounding reservoirs which arebrought into requisition to control overflow waters from the great streams. Some of these reservoirs, like Tungtinglake in Hupeh and Poyang in Hunan, have areas of 2,000 and 1,800 square miles respectively and during theheaviest rainy seasons each may rise through twenty to thirty feet, Then there are other large and small lakes inthe coastal plain giving an aggregate reservoir area exceeding 13,000 square miles, all of which are brought intoservice in controlling flood waters, all of which are steadily filling with the sediments brought from the far awayuncultivable mountain slopes and which are ultimately destined to become rich alluvial plains, doubtless to becanalized in the manner we have seen.

There is still another phase of these vast construction works which has been of the greatest moment in increasingthe maintenance capacity of the Empire,−−the wresting from the flood waters of the enormous volumes of siltwhich they carry, depositing it over the flooded areas, in the canals and along the shores in such manner as to addto the habitable and cultivable land. Reference has been made to the rapid growth of Chungming island in themouth of the Yangtse kiang, and the million people now finding homes on the 270 square miles of newly madeland which now has its canals, as may be seen in the upper margin of Fig. 52. The city of Shanghai, as its namesignifies, stood originally on the seashore, which has now grown twenty miles to the northward and to theeastward. In 220 B. C. the town of Putai in Shantung stood one−third of a mile from the sea, but in 1730 it wasforty−seven miles inland, and is forty−eight miles from the shore today.

Sienshuiku, on the Pei ho, stood upon the seashore in 500 A. D. We passed the city, on our way to Tientsin,eighteen miles inland. The dotted line laid in from the coast of the Gulf of Chihli in Fig. 53 marks one historicshore line and indicates a general growth of land eighteen miles to seaward.

Besides these actual extensions of the shore lines the centuries of flooding of lakes and low lying lands has sofilled many depressions as to convert large areas of swamp into cultivated fields. Not only this, but the spreading



of canal mud broadcast over the encircled fields has had two very important effects,−−namely, raising the level ofthe low lying fields, giving them better drainage and so better physical condition, and adding new plant food inthe form of virgin soil of the richest type, thus contributing to the maintenance of soil fertility, high maintenancecapacity and permanent agriculture through all the centuries.

These operations of maintenance and improvement had a very early inception; they appear to have persistedthroughout the recorded history of the Empire and are in vogue today. Canals of the type illustrated in Figs. 51and 52 have been built between 1886 and 1901, both on the extensions of Chungming island and the newlyformed main land to the north, as is shown by comparison of Stieler's atlas, revised in 1886, with the recentGerman survey.

Earlier than 2255 B. C., more than 4100 years ago, Emperor Yao appointed "The Great" Yu "Superintendent ofWorks" and entrusted him with the work of draining off the waters of disastrous floods and of canalizing therivers, and he devoted thirteen years to this work. This great engineer is said to have written several treatises onagriculture and drainage, and was finally called, much against his wishes, to serve as Emperor during the lastseven years of his life.

The history of the Hwang ho is one of disastrous floods and shiftings of its course, which have occurred manytimes in the years since before the time of the Great Yu, who perhaps began the works perpetuated today.Between 1300 A. D. and 1852 the Hwang ho emptied into the Yellow Sea south of the highlands of Shantung, butin that year, when in unusual flood, it broke through the north levees and finally took its present course, emptyingagain into the Gulf of Chihli, some three hundred miles further north. Some of these shiftings of course of theHwang ho and of the Yangtse kiang are indicated in dotted lines on the sketch map, Fig. 53, where it may he seenthat the Hwang ho during 146 years, poured its waters into the sea as far north as Tientsin, through the mouth ofthe Pei ho, four hundred miles to the northward of its mouth in 1852.

This mighty river is said to carry at low stage, past the city of Tsinan in Shantung, no less than 4,000 cubic yardsof water per second, and three times this volume when running at flood. This is water sufficient to inundatethirty−three square miles of level country ten feet deep in twenty−four hours. What must be said of the mentalstatus of a people who for forty centuries have measured their strength against such a Titan racing past theirhomes above the level of their fields, confined only between walls of their own construction? While they have notalways succeeded in controlling the river, they have never failed to try again. In 1877 this river broke its banks,inundating a vast. area, bringing death to a million people. Again, as late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to thenortheast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of the same city were devastated by it, and it is suchevents as these which have won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The Ungovernable" and "The Scourgeof the Sons of Han."

The building of the Grand Canal appears to have been a comparatively recent event in Chinese history. Themiddle section, between the Yangtse and Tsingkiangpu, is said to have been constructed about the sixth centuryB. C.; the southern section, between Chingkiang and Hangchow, during the years 605 to 617 A. D.; but thenorthern section, from the channel of the Hwang ho deserted in 1852, to Tientsin, was not built until the years1280−1283.

While this canal has been called by the Chinese Yu ho (Imperial river), Yun ho (Transport river) or Yunliang ho(Tribute bearing river) and while it has connected the great rivers coming down from the far interior into a greatwater−transport system, this feature of construction may have been but a by−product of the great dominatingpurpose which led to the vast internal improvements in the form of canals, dikes, levees and impoundingreservoirs so widely scattered, so fully developed and so effectively utilized. Rather the master purpose must havebeen maintenance for the increasing flood of humanity. And I am willing to grant to the Great Yu, with his fingeron the pulse of the nation, the power to project his vision four thousand years into the future of his race and toformulate some of the measures which might he inaugurated to grow with the years and make certain perpetual



maintenance for those to follow.

The exhaustion of cultivated fields must always have been the most fundamental, vital and difficult problem of allcivilized people and it appears clear that such canalization as is illustrated in Figs. 51 and 52 may have beenprimarily initial steps in the reclamation of delta and overflow lands. At any rate, whether deliberately so plannedor not, the canalization of the delta and overflow plains of China has been one of the most fundamental andfruitful measures for the conservation of her national resources that they could have taken, for we are convincedthat this oldest nation in the world has thus greatly augmented the extension of its coastal plains, conserving andbuilding out of the waste of erosion wrested from the great streams, hundreds of square miles of the richest andmost enduring of soils, and we have little doubt that were a full and accurate account given of human influenceupon the changes in this remarkable region during the last four thousand years it would show that these giganticsystems of canalization have been matters of slow, gradual growth, often initiated and always profoundlyinfluenced by the labors of the strong, patient, persevering, thoughtful but ever silent husband−men in their effortsto acquire homes and to maintain the productive power of their fields.

Nothing appears more clear than that the greatest material problem which can engage the best thought of Chinatoday is that of perfecting, extending and perpetuating the means for controlling her flood waters, for betterdraining of her vast areas of low land, and for utilizing the tremendous loads of silt borne by her streams moreeffectively in fertilizing existing fields and in building and reclaiming new land. With her millions of peopleneeding homes and anxious for work; who have done so much in land building, in reclamation and in themaintenance of soil fertility, the government should give serious thought to the possibility of putting largenumbers of them at work, effectively directed by the best engineering skill. It must now be entirely practicable,with engineering skill and mechanical appliances, to put the Hwang ho, and other rivers of China subject tooverflow, completely under control. With the Hwang ho confined to its channel, the adjacent low lands can bebetter drained by canalization and freed from the accumulating saline deposits which are rendering them sterile.Warping may be resorted to during the flood season to raise the level of adjacent low−lying fields, rendering themat the same time more fertile. Where the river is running above the adjacent plains there is no difficulty in drawingoff the turbid water by gravity, under controlled conditions, into diked basins, and even in compelling the river tobuttress its own levees. There is certainly great need and great opportunity for China to make still better and moreefficient her already wonderful transportation canals and those devoted to drainage, irrigation and fertilization.

In the United States, along the same lines, now that we are considering the development of inland waterways, thesubject should be surveyed broadly and much careful study may well be given to the works these old people havedeveloped and found serviceable through so many centuries. The Mississippi is annually bearing to the sea nearly225,000 acre−feet of the most fertile sediment, and between levees along a raised bed through two hundred milesof country subject to inundation. The time is here when there should he undertaken a systematic diversion of alarge part of this fertile soil over the swamp areas, building them into well drained, cultivable, fertile fieldsprovided with waterways to serve for drainage, irrigation, fertilization and transportation. These great areas ofswamp land may thus be converted into the most productive rice and sugar plantations to be found anywhere inthe world, and the area made capable of maintaining many millions of people as long as the Mississippi endures,bearing its burden of fertile sediment.

But the conservation and utilization of the wastes of soil erosion, as applied in the delta plain of China,stupendous as this work has been, is nevertheless small when measured by the savings which accrue from thecareful and extensive fitting of fields so largely practiced, which both lessens soil erosion and permits a largeamount of soluble and suspended matter in the run−off to be applied to, and retained upon, the fields through theirextensive systems of irrigation. Mountainous and hilly as are the lands of Japan, 11,000 square miles of hercultivated fields in the main islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku have been carefully graded to water levelareas bounded by narrow raised rims upon which sixteen or more inches of run−off water, with its suspended andsoluble matters, may be applied, a large part of which is retained on the fields or utilized by the crop, whilesurface erosion is almost completely prevented. The illustrations, Figs. 11, 12 and 13 show the application of the



principle to the larger and more level fields, and in Figs. 151, 152 and 225 may be seen the practice on steepslopes.

If the total area of fields graded practically to a water level in Japan aggregates 11,000 square miles, the total areathus surface fitted in China must be eight or tenfold this amount. Such enormous field erosion as is tolerated at thepresent time in our southern and south Atlantic states is permitted nowhere in the Far East, so far as we observed,not even where the topography is much steeper. The tea orchards as we saw them on the steeper slopes, notlevel−terraced, are often heavily mulched with straw which makes erosion, even by heavy rains impossible, whilethe treatment retains the rain where it falls, giving the soil opportunity to receive it under the impulse of bothcapillarity and gravity, and with it the soluble ash ingredients leached from the straw. The straw mulches we sawused in this manner were often six to eight inches deep, thus constituting a dressing of not less than six tons peracre, carrying 140 pounds of soluble potassium and 12 pounds of phosphorus. The practice, therefore, gives atonce a good fertilizing, the highest conservation and utilization of rainfall, and a complete protection against soilerosion. It is a multum in parvo treatment which characterizes so many of the practices of these people, whichhave crystallized from twenty centuries of high tension experience.

In the Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces as elsewhere in the densely populated portions of the Far East, we foundalmost all of the cultivated fields very nearly level or made so by grading. Instances showing the type of thisgrading in a comparatively level country are seen in Figs. 56 and 57. By this preliminary surface fitting of thefields these people have reduced to the lowest possible limit the waste of soil fertility by erosion and surfaceleaching. At the same time they are able to retain upon the field, uniformly distributed over it, the largest part ofthe rainfall practicable, and to compel a much larger proportion of the necessary run off to leave byunder−drainage than would be possible otherwise, conveying the plant food developed in the surface soil to theroots of the crops, while they make possible a more complete absorption and retention by the soil of the solubleplant food materials not taken up. This same treatment also furnishes the best possible conditions for theapplication of water to the fields when supplemental irrigation would be helpful, and for the withdrawal of surplusrainfall by surface drainage, should this be necessary.

Besides this surface fitting of fields there is a wide application of additional methods aiming to conserve bothrainfall and soil fertility, one of which is illustrated in Fig. 58, showing one end of a collecting reservoir. Therewere three of these reservoirs in tandem, connected with each other by surface ditches and with an adjoiningcanal. About the reservoir the level field is seen to be thrown into beds with shallow furrows between the longnarrow ridges. The furrows are connected by a head drain around the margin of the reservoir and separated from itby a narrow raised rim. Such a reservoir may be six to ten feet deep but can be completely drained only bypumping or by evaporation during the dry season. Into such reservoirs the excess surface water is drained whereall suspended matter carried from the field collects and is returned, either directly as an application of mud or asmaterial used in composts. In the preparation of composts, pits are dug near the margin of the reservoir, as seen inthe illustration, and into them are thrown coarse manure and any roughage in the form of stubble or other refusewhich may be available, these materials being saturated with the soft mud dipped from the bottom of thereservoir.

In all of the provinces where canals are abundant they also serve as reservoirs for collecting surface washings andalong their banks great numbers of compost pits are maintained and repeatedly filled during the season, for use onthe fields as the crops are changed. Fig. 59 shows two such pits on the bank of a canal, already filled.

In other cases, as in the Shantung province, illustrated in Fig. 60, the surface of the field may be thrown into broadleveled lands separated and bounded by deep and wide trenches into which the excess water of very heavy rainsmay collect. As we saw them there was no provision for draining the trenches and the water thus collected eitherseeps away or evaporates, or it may be returned in part by underflow and capillary rise to the soil from which itwas collected, or be applied directly for irrigation by pumping. In this province the rains may often be heavy butthe total fall for the year is small, being little more than twenty−four inches hence there is the greatest need for its



conservation, and this is carefully practiced.

VI. SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE

The Tosa Maru brought us again into Shanghai March 20th, just in time for the first letters from home. A rickshaman carried us and our heavy valise at a smart trot from the dock to the Astor House more than a mile, for 8.6cents, U. S. currency, and more than the conventional price for the service rendered. On our way we passedseveral loaded carryalls of the type seen in Fig. 61, on which women were riding for a fare one−tenth that we hadpaid, but at a slower pace and with many a jolt.

The ringing chorus which came loud and clear when yet half a block away announced that the pile drivers werestill at work on the foundation for an annex to the Astor House, and so were they on May 27th when we returnedfrom the Shantung province, 88 days after we saw them first, but with the task then practically completed. Hadthe eighteen men labored continuously through this interval, the cost of their services to the contractor would havebeen but $205.92. With these conditions the engine−driven pile driver could not compete. All ordinary labor herereceives a low wage. In the Chekiang province farm labor employed by the year received $30 and board, ten yearsago, but now is receiving $50. This is at the rate of about $12.90 and $21.50, gold, materially less than there ispaid per month in the United States. At Tsingtao in the Shantung province a missionary was paying a Chinesecook ten dollars per month, a man for general work nine dollars per month, and the cook's wife, for doing themending and other family service, two dollars per month, all living at home and feeding themselves. This servicerendered for $9.03, gold, per month covers the marketing, all care of the garden and lawn as well as all the workin the house. Missionaries in China find such servants reliable and satisfactory, and trust them with the purse andthe marketing for the table, finding them not only honest but far better at a bargain and at economical selectionthan themselves.

We had a soil tube made in the shops of a large English ship building and repair firm, employing many hundredChinese as mechanics, using the most modern and complex machinery, and the foreman stated that as soon as themen could understand well enough to take orders they were even better shop hands than the average in Scotlandand England. An educated Chinese booking clerk at the Soochow railway station in Kiangsu province wasreceiving a salary of $10.75, gold, per month. We had inquired the way to the Elizabeth Blake hospital and hevolunteered to escort us and did so, the distance being over a mile.

He would accept no compensation, and yet I was an entire stranger, without introduction of any kind. Everywherewe went in China, the laboring people appeared generally happy and contented if they have something to do, andshowed clearly that they were well nourished. The industrial classes are thoroughly organized, having had theirguilds or labor unions for centuries and it is not at all uncommon for a laborer who is known to have violated therules of his guild to be summarily dealt with or even to disappear without questions being asked. In going amongthe people, away from the lines of tourist travel, one gets the impression that everybody is busy or is in theharness ready to be busy. Tramps of our hobo type have few opportunities here and we doubt if one exists ineither of these countries. There are people physically disabled who are asking alms and there are organizedcharities to help them, but in proportion to the total population these appear to be fewer than in America orEurope. The gathering of unfortunates and habitual beggars about public places frequented by people of leisureand means naturally leads tourists to a wrong judgment regarding the extent of these social conditions. Nowhereamong these densely crowded people, either Chinese, Japanese or Korean, did we see one intoxicated, but amongAmericans and Europeans many instances were observed. All classes and both sexes use tobacco and theBritish−American Tobacco Company does a business in China amounting to millions of dollars annually.

During five months among these people we saw but two children in a quarrel. The two little boys were havingtheir trouble on Nanking road, Shanghai, where, grasping each other's pigtails, they tussled with a vengeance untilthe mother of one came and parted their ways.


VI. SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE 31

Among the most frequent sights in the city streets are the itinerant vendors of hot foods and confections. Stove,fuel, supplies and appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a bamboo pole. The mother inFig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue andwhite calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing of this calico by the very ancient, simple yeteffective method we witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This art, as with so many othersin China, was the inheritance of the family we saw at work, handed down to them through many generations. Theprinter was standing at a rough work bench upon which a large heavy stone in cubical form served as a weight tohold in place a thoroughly lacquered sheet of tough cardboard in which was cut the pattern to appear in white onthe cloth. Beside the stone stood a pot of thick paste prepared from a mixture of lime and soy bean flour. The soybeans were being ground in one corner of the same room by a diminutive edition of such an outfit as seen in Fig.64. The donkey was working in his permanent abode and whenever off duty he halted before manger and feed. Atthe operator's right lay a bolt of white cotton cloth fixed to unroll and pass under the stencil, held stationary by theheavy weight. To print, the stencil was raised and the cloth brought to place under it. The paste was then deftlyspread with a paddle over the surface and thus upon the cloth beneath wherever exposed through the openings inthe stencil. This completes the printing of the pattern on one section of the bolt of cloth. The free end of thestencil is then raised, the cloth passed along the proper distance by hand and the stencil dropped in place for thenext application. The paste is permitted to dry upon the cloth and when the bolt has been dipped into the blue dyethe portions protected by the paste remain white. In this simple manner has the printing of calico been done forcenturies for the garments of millions of children. From the ceiling of the drying room in this printery of oldentimes were hanging some hundreds of stencils bearing different patterns. In our great calico mills, printinghundreds of yards per minute, the mechanics and the chemistry differ only in detail of application and in dispatch,not in fundamental principle.

In almost any direction we traveled outside the city, in the pleasant mornings when the air was still, the laying ofwarp for cotton cloth could be seen, to be woven later in the country homes. We saw this work in progress manytimes and in many places in the early morning, usually along some roadside or open place, as seen in Fig. 65, butnever later in the day. When the warp is laid each will be rolled upon its stretcher and removed to the house to bewoven.

In many places in Kiangsu province batteries of the large dye pits were seen sunk in the fields and lined withcement. These were six to eight feet in diameter and four to five feet deep. In one case observed there were ninepits in the set. Some of the pits were neatly sheltered beneath live arbors, as represented in Fig. 66. But much ofthis spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing of late years is being displaced by the cheaper calicos of foreign makeand most of the dye pits we saw were not now used for this purpose, the two in the illustration serving as manurereceptacles. Our interpreter stated however that there is a growing dissatisfaction with foreign goods on accountof their lack of durability; and we saw many cases where the cloth dyed blue was being dried in large quantitieson the grave lands.

In another home for nearly an hour we observed a method of beating cotton and of laying it to serve as the bodyfor mattresses and the coverlets for beds. This we could do without intrusion because the home was also the workshop and opened full width directly upon the narrow street. The heavy wooden shutters which closed the home atnight were serving as a work bench about seven feet square, laid upon movable supports. There was barely roomto work between it and the sidewalk without impeding traffic, and on the three other sides there was a floor spacethree or four feet wide. In the rear sat grandmother and wife while in and out the four younger children wereplaying. Occupying the two sides of the room were receptacles filled with raw cotton and appliances for the work.There may have been a kitchen and sleeping room behind but no door, as such, was visible. The finishedmattresses, carefully rolled and wrapped in paper, were suspended from the ceiling. On the improvised worktable, with its top two feet above the floor, there had been laid in the morning before our visit, a mass of softwhite cotton more than six feet square and fully twelve inches deep. On opposite sides of this table the father andhis son, of twelve years, each twanged the string of their heavy bamboo bows, snapping the lint from the wads ofcotton and flinging it broadcast in an even layer over the surface of the growing mattress, the two strings the while



emitting tones pitched far below the hum of the bumblebee. The heavy bow was steadied by a cord securedaround the body of the operator, allowing him to manage it with one hand and to move readily around his work ina manner different from the custom of the Japanese seen in Fig. 67. By this means the lint was expeditiouslyplucked and skillfully and uniformly laid, the twanging being effected by an appliance similar to that used inJapan.

Repeatedly, taken in small bits from the barrel of cotton, the lint was distributed over the entire surface with greatdexterity and uniformity, the mattress growing upward with perfectly vertical sides, straight edges and squarecorners. In this manner a thoroughly uniform texture is secured which compresses into a body of even thickness,free from hard places.

The next step in building the mattress is even more simple and expeditious. A basket of long bobbins of roughlyspun cotton was near the grandmother and probably her handiwork. The father took from the wall a slenderbamboo rod like a fish−pole, six feet long, and selecting one of the spools, threaded the strand through an eye inthe small end. With the pole and spool in one hand and the free end of the thread, passing through the eye, in theother, the father reached the thread across the mattress to the boy who hooked his finger over it, carrying it to oneedge of the bed of cotton. While this was doing the father had whipped the pole back to his side and caught thethread over his own finger, bringing this down upon the cotton opposite his son. There was thus laid a doublestrand, but the pole continued whipping hack and forth across the bed, father and son catching the threads andbringing them to place on the cotton at the rate of forty to fifty courses per minute, and in a very short time theentire surface of the mattress had been laid with double strands. A heavy bamboo roller was next laid across thestrands at the middle, passed carefully to one side, back again to the middle and then to the other edge. Anotherlayer of threads was then laid diagonally and this similarly pressed with the same roller; then another diagonallythe other way and finally straight across in both directions. A similar network of strands had been laid upon thetable before spreading the cotton. Next a flat bottomed, circular, shallow basket−like form two feet in diameterwas used to gently compress the material from twelve to six inches in thickness. The woven threads were nowturned over the edge of the mattress on all sides and sewed down, after which, by means of two heavy solidwooden disks eighteen inches in diameter, father and son compressed the cotton until the thickness was reducedto three inches. There remained the task of carefully folding and wrapping the finished piece in oiled paper and ofsuspending it from the ceiling.

On March 20th, when visiting the Boone Road and Nanking Road markets in Shanghai, we had our first surpriseregarding the extent to which vegetables enter into the daily diet of the Chinese. We had observed longprocessions of wheelbarrow men moving from the canals through the streets carrying large loads of the green tipsof rape in bundles a foot long and five inches in diameter. These had come from the country on boats eachcarrying tons of the succulent leaves and stems. We had counted as many as fifty wheelbarrow men passing agiven point on the street in quick succession, each carrying 300 to 500 pounds of the green rape and moving sorapidly that it was not easy to keep pace with them, as we learned in following one of the trains during twentyminutes to its destination. During this time not a man in the train halted or slackened his pace.

This rape is very extensively grown in the fields, the tips of the stems cut when tender and eaten, after beingboiled or steamed, after the manner of cabbage. Very large quantities are also packed with salt in the proportion ofabout twenty pounds of salt to one hundred pounds of the rape. This, Fig. 68, and many other vegetables are soldthus pickled and used as relishes with rice, which invariably is cooked and served without salt or other seasoning.

Another field crop very extensively grown for human food, and partly as a source of soil nitrogen, is closely alliedto our alfalfa. This is the Medicago astragalus, two beds of which are seen in Fig. 69. Tender tips of the stems aregathered before the stage of blossoming is reached and served as food after boiling or steaming. It is knownamong the foreigners as Chinese "clover." The stems are also cooked and then dried for use when the crop is outof season. When picked very young, wealthy Chinese families pay an extra high price for the tender shoots,sometimes as much as 20 to 28 cents, our currency, per pound.



The markets are thronged with people making their purchases in the early mornings, and the congested condition,with the great variety of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate fish market in London.In the following table we give a list of vegetables observed there and the prices at which they were selling.

−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−LIST OF VEGETABLES DISPLAYED FOR SALE IN BOONE ROAD MARKET, SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH, 1900, WITH PRICES EXPRESSED IN U. S. CURRENCY.−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Cents Lotus roots, per lb. 1.60 Bamboo sprouts, per lb. 6.40 English cabbage, per lb. 1.33 Olive greens, per lb. .67 White greens, per lb. .33 Tee Tsai, per lb. .53 Chinese celery, per lb. .67 Chinese clover, per lb. .58 Chinese clover, very young, lb. 21.33 Oblong white cabbage, per lb. 2.00 Red beans, per lb. 1.33 Yellow beans, per lb. 1.87 Peanuts, per lb. 2.49 Ground nuts, per lb. 2.96 Cucumbers, per lb. 2.58 Green pumpkin, per lb. 1.62 Maize, shelled, per lb. 1.00 Windsor beans, dry, per lb. 1.72 French lettuce, per head .44 Hau Tsai, per head .87 Cabbage lettuce, per head .22 Kale, per lb. 1.60 Rape, per lb. .23 Portuguese water cress, basket 2.15 Shang tsor, basket 8.60 Carrots, per lb. .97 String beans; per lb. 1.60 Irish potatoes, per lb. 1.60 Red onions, per lb. 4.96 Long white turnips, per lb. .44 Flat string beans, per lb. 4.80 Small white turnips, bunch .44 Onion stems, per lb. 1.29 Lima beans, green, shelled, lb. 6.45 Egg plants, per lb. 4.30 Tomatoes, per lb. 5.16 Small flat turnips, per lb. .86 Small red beets, per lb. 1.29 Artichokes, per lb. 1.29 White beans, dry, per lb. 4.80 Radishes, per lb. 1.29 Garlic, per lb. 2.15 Kohl rabi, per lb. 2.15 Mint, per lb. 4.30 Leeks, per lb. 2.18 Large celery, bleached, bunch 2.10 Sprouted peas, per lb. .80 Sprouted beans, per lb. .93 Parsnips, per lb. 1.29 Ginger roots, per lb. 1.60 Water chestnuts, per lb. 1.33



Large sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.33 Small sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.00 Onion sprouts, per lb. 2.13 Spinach, per lb. 1.00 Fleshy stemmed lettuce, peeled, per lb. 2.00 Fleshy stemmed lettuce, unpeeled, per lb. .67 Bean curd, per lb. 3.93 Shantung walnuts, per lb. 4.30 Duck eggs, dozen 8.34 Hen's eggs, dozen 7.30 Goat's meat, per lb. 6.45 Pork, per lb. 6.88 Hens, live weight, per lb. 6.45 Ducks, live weight, per lb. 5.59 Cockerels, live weight, per lb. 5.59−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

This long list, made up chiefly of fresh vegetables displayed for sale on one market day, is by no means complete.The record is only such as was made in passing down one side and across one end of the market occupying nearlyone city block. Nearly everything is sold by weight and the problem of correct weights is effectively solved byeach purchaser carrying his own scales, which he unhesitatingly uses in the presence of the dealer. These scalesare made on the pattern of the old time steelyards but from slender rods of wood or bamboo provided with a scaleand sliding poise, the suspensions all being made with strings.

We stood by through the purchasing of two cockerels and the dickering over their weight. A dozen live birds wereunder cover in a large, open−work basket. The customer took out the birds one by one, examining them by touch,finally selecting two, the price being named. These the dealer tied together by their feet and weighed them,announcing the result; whereupon the customer checked the statement with his own scales. An animated dialoguefollowed, punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing the birds into the basket and turningto go away while the dealer grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again balancing theroosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at thedealer, who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm subsided and the dealer accepted92c, Mexican, for the two birds. They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three poundseach, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our currency.

Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and Japan and when one sees them growing they suggestgiant stalks of asparagus, some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot in height at thestage for cutting. They are shipped in large quantities from province to province where they do not grow or whenthey are out of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki referred to in Fig. 22, had come from Canton or Swatow orpossibly Formosa. The form, foliage and bloom of the bamboo give the most beautiful effects in the landscape,especially when grouped with tree forms. They are usually cultivated in small clumps about dwellings in placesnot otherwise readily utilized, as seen in Fig. 66. Like the asparagus bud, the bamboo sprout grows to its fullheight between April and August, even when it exceeds thirty or even sixty feet in height. The buds spring fromfleshy underground stems or roots whose stored nourishment permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stagesmay exceed twelve inches in twenty−four hours. But while the full size of the plant is attained the first season,three or four years are required to ripen and harden the wood sufficiently to make it suitable for the many uses towhich the stems are put. It would seem that the time must come when some of the many forms of bamboo will beintroduced and largely grown in many parts of this country.

Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and widely cultivated from Canton to Tokyo. These are seenin the lower section of Fig. 70, and the plants in bloom in Fig. 71, growing in water, their natural habitat. Thelotus is grown in permanent ponds not readily drained for rice or other crops, and the roots are widely shipped.



Sprouted beans and peas of many kinds and the sprouts of other vegetables, such as onions, are very generallyseen in the markets of both China and Japan, at least during the late winter and early spring, and are sold as foods,having different flavors and digestive qualities, and no doubt with important advantageous effects in nutrition.

Ginger is another. crop which is very widely and extensively cultivated. It is generally displayed in the market inthe root form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of China than the water chestnut. This isa small corm or fleshy bulb having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell a dozen spittedtogether on slender sticks the length of a knitting needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the canalsproducing a fruit resembling a horny nut having a shape which suggests for them the name "buffalo−horn". Stillanother plant, known as water−grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu province where the land is toowet for rice. The plant has a tender succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coarser ones awaysuggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten is the central tender new growth, and when cookedforms a delicate savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars, Mexican, per hundred catty, or$.97 to $1.29 per hundredweight, and the return per acre is from $13 to $20.

The small number of animal products which are included in the market list given should not be taken as indicatingthe proportion of animal to vegetable foods in the dietaries of these people. It is nevertheless true that they arevegetarians to a far higher degree than are most western nations, and the high maintenance efficiency of theagriculture of China, Korea and Japan is in great measure rendered possible by the adoption of a diet so largelyvegetarian. Hopkins, in his Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture, page 234, makes this pointed statement offact: "1000 bushels of grain has at least five times as much food value and will support five times as many peopleas will the meat or milk that can be made from it". He also calls attention to the results of many Rothamstedfeeding experiments with growing and fattening cattle, sheep and swine, showing that the cattle destroyedoutright, in every 100 pounds of dry substance eaten, 57.3 pounds, this passing off into the air, as does all of woodexcept the ashes, when burned in the stove; they left in the excrements 36.5 pounds, and stored as increase but 6.2pounds of the 100. With sheep the corresponding figures were 60.1 pounds; 31.9 pounds and 8 pounds; and withswine they were 65.7 pounds; 16.7 pounds and 17.6 pounds. But less than two−thirds of the substance stored inthe animal can become food for man and hence we get but four pounds in one hundred of the dry substances eatenby cattle in the form of human food; but five pounds from the sheep and eleven pounds from swine.

In view of these relations, only recently established as scientific facts by rigid research, it is remarkable that thesevery ancient people came long ago to discard cattle as milk and meat producers; to use sheep more for their peltsand wool than for food; while swine are the one kind of the three classes which they did retain in the role ofmiddleman as transformers of coarse substances into human food.

It is clear that in the adoption of the succulent forms of vegetables as human food important advantages aregained. At this stage of maturity they have a higher digestibility, thus making the elimination of the animal lessdifficult. Their nitrogen content is relatively higher and this in a measure compensates for loss of meat. Bydevoting the soil to growing vegetation which man can directly digest they have saved 60 pounds per 100 ofabsolute waste by the animal, returning their own wastes to the field for the maintenance of fertility. In usingthese immature forms of vegetation so largely as food they are able to produce an immense amount that wouldotherwise be impossible, for this is grown in a shorter time, permitting the same soil to produce more crops. It isalso produced late in the fall and early in the spring when the season is too cold and the hours of sunshine too feweach day to permit of ripening crops.

VII. THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS

With the vast and ever increasing demands made upon materials which are the products of cultivated fields, forfood, for apparel, for furnishings and for cordage, better soil management must grow more important aspopulations multiply. With the increasing cost and ultimate exhaustion of mineral fuel; with our timber vanishing


VII. THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS 36

rapidly before the ever growing demands for lumber and paper; with the inevitably slow growth of trees and thevery limited areas which the world can ever afford to devote to forestry, the time must surely come when, in shortperiod rotations, there will be grown upon the farm materials from which to manufacture not only paper and thesubstitutes for lumber, but fuels as well. The complete utilization of every stream which reaches the sea,reinforced by the force of the winds and the energy of the waves which may be transformed along the coast lines,cannot fully meet the demands of the future for power and heat; hence only in the event of science andengineering skill becoming able to devise means for transforming the unlimited energy of space through whichwe are ever whirled, with an economy approximating that which crops now exhibit, can good soil management berelieved of the task of meeting a portion of the world's demand for power and heat.

When these statements were made in 1905 we did not know that for centuries there had existed in China, Koreaand Japan a density of population such as to require the extensive cultivation of crops for fuel and buildingmaterial, as well as for fabrics, by the ordinary methods of tillage, and hence another of the many surprises wehad was the solution these people had reached of their fuel problem and of how to keep warm. Their solution hasbeen direct and the simplest possible. Dress to make fuel for warmth of body unnecessary, and burn the coarserstems of crops, such as cannot be eaten, fed to animals or otherwise made useful. These people still use whatwood can be grown on the untillable land within transporting distance, and convert much wood into charcoal,making transportation over longer distances easier. The general use of mineral fuels, such as coal, coke, oils andgas, had been impossible to these as to every other people until within the last one hundred years. Coal, coke, oiland natural gas, however, have been locally used by the Chinese from very ancient times. For more than twothousand years brine from many deep wells in Szechwan province has been evaporated with heat generated by theburning of natural gas from wells, conveyed through bamboo stems to the pans and burned from iron terminals. Inother sections of the same province much brine is evaporated over coal fires. Alexander Hosie estimates theproduction of salt in Szechwan province at more than 600 million pounds annually.

Coal is here used also to some extent for warming the houses, burned in pits sunk in the floor, the smoke escapingwhere it may. The same method of heating we saw in use in the post office at Yokohama during February. Thefires were in large iron braziers more than two feet across the top, simply set about the room, three being inoperation. Stoves for house warming are not used in dwellings in these countries.

In both China and Japan we saw coal dust put into the form and size of medium oranges by mixing it with a thinpaste of clay. Charcoal is similarly molded, as seen in Fig. 72, using a by−product from the manufacture of ricesyrup for cementing. In Nanking we watched with much interest the manufacture of charcoal briquets by anothermethod. A Chinese workman was seated upon the earth floor of a shop. By his side was a pile of powderedcharcoal, a dish of rice syrup by−product and a basin of the moistened charcoal powder. Between his legs was aheavy mass of iron containing a slightly conical mold two inches deep, two and a half inches across at the top anda heavy iron hammer weighing several pounds. In his left hand he held a short heavy ramming tool and with hisright placed in the mold a pinch of the moistened charcoal; then followed three well directed blows from thehammer upon the ramming tool, compressing the charge of moistened, sticky charcoal into a very compact layer.Another pinch of charcoal was added and the process repeated until the mold was filled, when the briquet wasforced out.

By this simplest possible mechanism, the man, utilizing but a small part of his available energy, was subjectingthe charcoal to an enormous pressure such as we attain only with the best hydraulic presses, and he was using theprinciple of repeated small charges recently patented and applied in our large and most efficient cotton and haypresses, which permit much denser bales to be made than is possible when large charges are added, and theChinese is here, as in a thousand other ways, thoroughly sound in his application of mechanical principles. Hisoutput for the day was small but his patience seemed unlimited. His arms and body, bared to the waist, showedvigor and good feeding, while his face wore the look of contentment.



With forty centuries of such inheritance coursing in the veins of four hundred millions of people, in a countrypossessed of such marvelous wealth of coal and water power, of forest and of agricultural possibilities, thereshould be a future speedily blossoming and ripening into all that is highest and best for such a nation. If they willretain their economies and their industry and use their energies to develop, direct and utilize the power in theirstreams and in their coal fields along the lines which science has now made possible to them, at the same timewalking in paths of peace and virtue, there is little worth while which may not come to such a people.

A Shantung farmer in winter dress, Fig. 18, and the Kiangsu woman portrayed in Fig. 73, in correspondingcostume, are typical illustrations of the manner in which food for body warmth is minimized and of the way theheat generated in the body is conserved. Observe his wadded and quilted frock, his trousers of similar goods tiedabout the ankle, with his feet clad in multiple socks and cloth shoes provided with thick felted soles. These typesof dress, with the wadding, quilting, belting and tying, incorporate and confine as part of the effective material alarge volume of air, thus securing without cost, much additional warmth without increasing the weight of thegarments. Beneath these outer garments several under pieces of different weights are worn which greatly conservethe warmth during the coldest weather and make possible a wide range of adjustment to suit varying changes intemperature. It is doubtful if there could he devised a wardrobe suited to the conditions of these people at asmaller first cost and maintenance expense. Rev. E. A. Evans, of the China Inland Mission, for many yearsresiding at Sunking in Szechwan, estimated that a farmer's wardrobe, once it was procured, could be maintainedwith an annual expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum procuring the materials for both repairs andrenewals.

The intense individual economy, extending to the smallest matters, so universally practiced by these people, hassustained the massive strength of the Mongolian nations through their long history and this trait is seen in theirhandling of the fuel problem, as it is in all other lines. In the home of Mrs. Wu, owner and manager of a 25−acrerice farm in Chekiang province, there was a masonry kang seven by seven feet, about twenty−eight inches high,which could be warmed in winter by building a fire within. The top was fitted for mats to serve as couch by dayand as a place upon which to spread the bed at night. In the Shantung province we visited the home of aprosperous farmer and here found two kangs in separate sleeping apartments, both warmed by the waste heat fromthe kitchen whose chimney flue passed horizontally under the kangs before rising through the roof. These kangswere wide enough to spread the beds upon, about thirty inches high, and had been constructed from brick twelveinches square and four inches thick, made from the clay subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plasticmass, mixed with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a mortar of the same material. Thesemassive kangs are thus capable of absorbing large amounts of the waste heat from the kitchen during the day andof imparting congenial warmth to the couches by day and to the beds and sleeping apartments during the night. Insome Manchurian inns large compound kangs are so arranged that the guests sleep heads together in double rows,separated only by low dividing rails, securing the greatest economy of fuel, providing the guests with placeswhere they may sit upon the moderately warmed fireplace, and spread their beds when they retire.

The economy of the chimney beds does not end with the warmth conserved. The earth and straw brick, throughthe processes of fermentation and through shrinkage, become open and porous after three or four years of service,so that the draft is defective, giving annoyance from smoke, which requires their renewal. But the heat, thefermentation and the absorption of products of combustion have together transformed the comparatively infertilesubsoil into what they regard as a valuable fertilizer and these discarded brick are used in the preparation ofcompost fertilizers for the fields. On account of this value of the discarded brick the large amount of laborinvolved in removing and rebuilding the kangs is not regarded altogether as labor lost.

Our own observations have shown that heating soils to dryness at a temperature of 110 deg C. greatly increasesthe freedom with which plant food may be recovered from them by the solvent power of water, and the sameheating doubtless improves the physical and biological conditions of the soil as well. Nitrogen combined asammonia, and phosphorus, potash and lime are all carried with the smoke or soot, mechanically in the draft andarrested upon the inner walls of the kangs or filter into the porous brick with the smoke, and thus add plant food



directly to the soil. Soot from wood has been found to contain, as an average, 1.36 per cent of nitrogen; .51 percent of phosphorus and 5.34 per cent of potassium. We practice burning straw and corn stalks in enormousquantities, to get them easily out of the way, thus scattering on the winds valuable plant food, thoughtlessly andlazily wasting where these people laboriously and religiously save. These are gains in addition to those whichresult from the formation of nitrates, soluble potash and other plant foods through fermentation. We saw manyinstances where these discarded brick were being used, both in Shantung and Chihli provinces, and it wascommon in walking through the streets of country villages to see piles of them, evidently recently removed.

The fuel grown on the farms consists of the stems of all agricultural crops which are to any extent woody, unlessthey can be put to some better use. Rice straw, cotton stems pulled by the roots after the seed has been gathered,the stems of windsor beans, those of rape and the millets, all pulled by the roots, and many other kinds, arebrought to the market tied in bundles in the manner seen in Figs. 74, 75 and 76. These fuels are used for domesticpurposes and for the burning of lime, brick, roofing tile and earthenware as well as in the manufacture of oil, tea,bean−curd and many other processes. In the home, when the meals are cooked with these light bulky fuels, it isthe duty of some one, often one of the children, to sit on the floor and feed the fire with one hand while with theother a bellows is worked to secure sufficient draft. The manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake isone of the common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw rice hulls and rice straw beingused as fuel. In the large low, one−story, tile−roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory and dwelling, afamily of four generations were at work, the grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading inthe home and store where the cotton seed oil was being. retailed for 22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cakeat 33 cents, gold, per hundredweight. Back of the store and living rooms, in the mill compartment, threeblindfolded water buffalo, each working a granite mill, were crushing and grinding the cotton seed. Three otherbuffalo, for relay service, were lying at rest or eating, awaiting their turn at the ten−hour working day. Two of themills were horizontal granite burrs more than four feet in diameter, the upper one revolving once with each circuitmade by the cow. The third mill was a pair of massive granite rollers, each five feet in diameter and two feetthick, joined on a very short horizontal axle which revolved on a circular stone plate about a vertical axis oncewith each circuit of the buffalo. Two men tended the three mills. After the cotton seed had been twice passedthrough the mills it was steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The steamer consisted of twocovered wooden hoops not unlike that seen in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal wasplaced over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water from which the steam was forced through thecharge of meal. Each charge was weighed in a scoop balanced on the arm of a bamboo scale, thus securing auniform weight for the cakes.

On the ground in front of the furnace sat a boy of twelve years steadily feeding rice chaff into the fire with his lefthand at the rate of about thirty charges per minute, while with his right hand, and in perfect rhythm, he drew backand forth the long plunger of a rectangular box bellows, maintaining a forced draft for the fire. At intervals theman who was bringing fuel fed into the furnace a bundle of rice straw, thus giving the boy's left arm a moment'srespite. When the steaming has rendered the oil sufficiently fluid the meal is transferred, hot, to ten−inch hoopstwo inches deep, made of braided bamboo strands, and is deftly tramped with the bare feet, while hot, the operatorsteadying himself by a pair of hand bars. After a stack of sixteen hoops, divided by a slight sifting of chaff orshort straw to separate the cakes, had been completed these were taken to one of four pressmen, who were keptbusy in expressing the oil.

The presses consisted of two parallel timbers framed together, long enough to receive the sixteen hoops on edgeabove a gap between them. These cheeses of meal are subjected to an enormous pressure secured by means ofthree parallel lines of wedges forced against the follower each by an iron−bound master wedge, driven home witha heavy beetle weighing some twenty−five or thirty pounds. The lines of wedges were tightened in succession, theloosened line receiving an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the master wedge, which wasthen driven home. To keep good the supply of wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy,older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping new ones, the broken wedges and the chipsgoing to the furnace for fuel.



By this very simple, readily constructed and inexpensive mechanism enormous pressures were secured and whenthe operator had obtained the desired compression he lighted his pipe and sat down to smoke until the oil ceaseddripping into the pit sunk in the floor beneath the press. In this interval the next series of cakes went to anotherpress and the work thus kept up during the day.

Six hundred and forty cakes was the average daily output of this family of eight men and two boys, with their sixwater buffalo. The cotton seed cakes were being sold as feed, and a near−by Chinese dairyman was using themfor his herd of forty water buffalo, seen in Fig. 78, producing milk for the foreign trade in Shanghai. This herd offorty cows one of which was an albino, was giving an average of but 200 catty of milk per day, or at the rate ofsix and two−thirds pounds per head! The cows have extremely small udders but the milk is very rich, as indicatedby an analysis made in the office of the Shanghai Board of Health and obtained through the kindness of Dr.Arthur Stanley. The milk showed a specific gravity of 1.028 and contained 20.1 per cent total solids; 7.5 per centfat; 4.2 per cent milk sugar and .8 per cent ash. In the family of Rev. W. H. Hudson, of the Southern PresbyterianMission, Kashing, whose very gracious hospitality we enjoyed on two different occasions, the butter made fromthe milk of two of these cows, one of which, with her calf, is seen in Fig. 79, was used on the family table. It wasas white as lard or cottolene but the texture and flavor were normal and far better than the Danish and NewZealand products served at the hotels.

The milk produced at the Chinese dairy in Shanghai was being sold in bottles holding two pounds, at the rate ofone dollar a bottle, or 43 cents, gold. This seems high and there may have been misunderstanding on the part ofmy interpreter but his answer to my question was that the milk was being sold at one Shanghai dollar per bottleholding one and a half catty, which, interpreted, is the value given above.

But fuel from the stems of cultivated plants which are in part otherwise useful, is not sufficient to meet the needsof country and village, notwithstanding the intense economies practiced. Large areas of hill and mountain land aremade to contribute their share, as we have seen in the south of China, where pine boughs were being used forfiring the lime and cement kilns. At Tsingtao we saw the pine bough fuel on the backs of mules, Fig. 80, comingfrom the hills in Shantung province. Similar fuels were being used in Korea and we have photographs of largepine bough fuel stacks, taken in Japan at Funabashi, east from Tokyo.

The hill and mountain lands, wherever accessible to the densely peopled plains, have long been cut over and asregularly has afforestation been encouraged and deliberately secured even through the transplanting of nurserystock grown expressly for that purpose. We had read so much regarding the reckless destruction of forests inChina and Japan and had seen so few old forest trees except where these had been protected about temples, gravesor houses, that when Rev. R. A. Haden, of the Elizabeth Blake hospital, near Soochow insisted that the Chinesewere deliberate foresters and that they regularly grow trees for fuel, transplanting them when necessary to securea close and early stand, after the area had been cleared, we were so much surprised that he generously volunteeredto accompany us westward on a two days journey into the hill country where the practice could be seen.

A family owning a houseboat and living upon it was engaged for the journey. This family consisted of a recentlywidowed father, his two sons, newly married, and a helper. They were to transport us and provide sleepingquarters for myself, Mr. Haden and a cook for the consideration of $3.00, Mexican, per day and to continue thejourney through the night, leaving the day for observation in the hills.

The recent funeral had cost the father $100 and the wedding of the two sons $50 each, while the remodeling of thehouseboat to meet the needs of the new family relations cost still another $100. To meet these expenses it hadbeen necessary to borrow the full amount, $300. On $100 the father was paying 20 per cent interest; on $50 hewas compelled to pay 50 per cent interest. The balance he had borrowed from friends without interest but with theunderstanding that he would return the favor should occasion be required.



Rev. A. E. Evans informed us that it is a common practice in China for neighbors to help one another in times ofgreat financial stress. This is one of the methods:

A neighbor may need 8000 cash. He prepares a feast and sends invitations to a hundred friends. They know therehas been no death in his family and that there is no wedding, still it is understood that he is in need of money. Thefeast is prepared at a small expense. The invited guests come, each bringing eighty cash as a present. Therecipient is expected to keep a careful record of contributing friends and to repay the sum. Another method is likethis: For some reason a man needs to borrow 20,000 cash. He proposes to twenty of his friends that they organizea club to raise this sum. If the friends agree each pays 1000 cash to the organizing member. The balance of theclub draw lots as to which member shall be number two, three, four, five, etc., designating the order in whichpayments shall be made. The man borrowing the money is then under obligation to see that these payments aremet in full at the times agreed upon. Not infrequently a small rate of interest is charged.

Rates of interest are very high in China, especially on small sums where securities are not the best. Mr. Evansinforms me that two per cent per month is low and thirty per cent per annum is very commonly collected. Suchobligations are often never met but they do not outlaw and may descend from father to son.

The boat cost $292.40 in U. S. currency; the yearly earning was $107.50 to $120.40. The funeral cost $43 and $43more was required for the wedding of the two sons. They were receiving for the services of six people $1.29 perday. An engagement for two weeks or a month could have been made for materially lower rates and their averagedaily earning, on the basis of three hundred days service in the year, and the $120.40 total earning, would be only40.13 cents, less than seven cents each, hence their trip with us was two of their banner days. Foreigners inShanghai and other cities frequently engage such houseboat service for two weeks or a month of travel on thecanals and rivers, finding it a very enjoyable as well as inexpensive way of having a picnic outing.

On reaching the hill lands the next morning there were such scenes as shown in Fig. 82, where the strips of treegrowth, varying from two to ten years, stretched directly up the slope, often in strong contrast on account of thestraight boundaries and different ages of the timber. Some of these long narrow holdings were less than two rodswide and on one of these only recently cut, up which we walked for considerable distance, the young pine werespringing up in goodly numbers. As many as eighteen young trees were counted on a width of six feet across thestrip of thirty feet wide. On this area everything had been recently cut clean. Even stumps and the large roots weredug and saved for fuel.

In Fig. 83 are seen bundles of fuel from such a strip, just brought into the village, the boughs retaining the leavesalthough the fuel had been dried. The roots, too, are tied in with the limbs so that everything is saved. On ourwalk to the hills we passed many people bringing their loads of fuel swinging from carrying poles on theirshoulders. Inquiries regarding the afforestation of these strips of hillside showed that the extensive diggingnecessitated by the recovery of the roots usually caused new trees to spring up quickly as volunteers fromscattered seed and from the roots, so that planting was not generally required. Talking with a group of people as towhere we could see some of the trees used for replanting the hillsides, a lad of seven years was first to understandand volunteered to conduct us to a planting. This he did and was overjoyed on receipt of a trifle for his services.One of these little pine nurseries is seen in Fig. 84, many being planted in suitable places through the woods. Thelad led us to two such locations with whose whereabouts he was evidently very familiar, although they wereconsiderable distance from the path and far from home. These small trees are used in filling in places where thevolunteer growth has not been sufficiently close. A strong herbaceous growth usually springs up quickly on thesenewly cleared lands and this too is cut for fuel or for use in making compost or as green manure.

The grass which grows on the grave lands, if not fed off, is also cut and saved for fuel. We saw several instancesof this outside of Shanghai, one where a mother with her daughter, provided with rake, sickle, basket and bag,were gathering the dry stubble and grass of the previous season, from the grave lands where there was less thancould be found on our closely mowed meadows. In Fig. 85 may be seen a man who has just returned with such a



load, and in his hand is the typical rake of the Far East, made by simply bending bamboo splints, claw−shape, andsecuring them as seen in the engraving.

In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in Manchuria, millet stems, especially those of the great kaoliang orsorghum, are extensively used for fuel and for building as well as for screens, fences and matting. At Mukden thekaoliang was selling as fuel at $2.70 to $3.00, Mexican, for a 100−bundle load of stalks, weighing seven catty tothe bundle. The yield per acre of kaoliang fuel amounts to 5600 pounds and the stalks are eight to twelve feetlong, so that when carried on the backs of mules or horses the animals are nearly hidden by the load. The pricepaid for plant stem fuel from agricultural crops, in different parts of China and Japan, ranged from $1.30 to $2.85,U. S. currency, per ton. The price of anthracite coal at Nanking was $7.76 per ton. Taking the weight of dry oakwood at 3500 pounds per cord, the plant stem fuel, for equal weight, was selling at $2.28 to $5.00.

Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries and sent to market baled in rough mattingor in basketwork cases woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels. When such wood isnot converted into charcoal it is sawed into one or two−foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen inFig. 77.

Along the Mukden−Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being shipped in four−foot lengths, in the form ofcordwood. In Korea cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in four−foot sticks laidblanket−fashion over the animal, extending far down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to therailway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China wherewe visited, the tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the ground wherever there was notindividual ownership in small holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many cases, butthese were always small, evidently not more than two or three years standing, and appearing to have beenrepeatedly cut back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy oak boughs brought to the ricefields and used as green manure.

There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju andFusan in Korea; and throughout most of our journey in Japan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from Shimonoseki toYokohama. In all of these countries afforestation takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings aremade once in ten, twenty or twenty−five years. When the wood is sold to those coming for it the takers pay at therate of 40 sen per one horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87. Director Ono, of theAkashi Experiment station, informed us that such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in tenyears, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the ten−year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre butwhen they are suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom culture is extensively practicedunder the shade of some of these wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of $100 per acre.

The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto, amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, lessthan twenty millions of which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state and to the ImperialCrown.

In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of materials other than wood for buildingpurposes and very many of the substitutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields. The use of ricestraw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village, Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, andeven the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed in the Canton delta region, such aconstruction being warm for winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs, however, is short andthey must be renewed as often as every three to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for thefields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes only going to the fields.

Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings, are very extensively used for roofing, clay beingabundant and near at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used alone or plastered, as in



Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings outsidethe larger cities.

At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet roofs and the use of kaoliang stems aslumber. Rafters were set in the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the long kaoliangstems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sortof matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the surface and well trowelled until it began to showon the under side. Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in bundles eight inches thick, cutsquare across the butts to eighteen inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses after themanner of shingles but the butts of the stems are driven forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, makingthe courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be plastered with earth mortar or with an earth−limemortar, which is less liable to wash in heavy rain.

The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary framewith posts and girts about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates carrying the roof. Standingvertically against the girts and tied to them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were plasteredoutside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts andsimilarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house, leaving dead air spaces between the girts.

Brick made from earth are very extensively used for house building, chaff and short straw being used as a bindingmaterial, the brick being simply dried in the sun, as seen in Fig. 89. A house in the process of building, where thebrick were being used, is seen in Fig. 90. The foundation of the dwelling, it will be observed, was laid withwell−formed hard−burned brick, these being necessary to prevent capillary moisture from the ground being drawnup and soften the earth brick, making the wall unsafe.

Several kilns for burning brick, built of clay and earth, were passed in our journey up the Pei ho, and stackedabout them, covering an area of more than eight hundred feet back from the river were bundles of the kaoliangstems to serve as fuel in the kilns.

The extensive use of the unburned brick is necessitated by the difficulty of obtaining fuel, and various methodsare adopted to reduce the number of burned brick required in construction. One of these devices is shown in Fig.79, where the city wall surrounding Kashing is constructed of alternate courses of four layers of burned brickseparated by layers of simple earth concrete.

In addition to the multiple−function, farm−gown crops used for food, fuel and building material, there is a largeacreage devoted to the growing of textile and fiber products and enormous quantities of these are producedannually. In Japan, where some fifty millions of people are chiefly fed on the produce of little more than 21,000square miles of cultivated land, there was grown in 1906 more than 75,500,000 pounds of cotton, hemp, flax andChina grass textile stock, occupying 76,700 acres of the cultivated land. On 141,000 other acres there grew115,000,000 pounds of paper mulberry and Mitsumata, materials used in the manufacture of paper. From stillanother 14,000 acres were taken 92,000,000 pounds of matting stuff, while more than 957,000 acres wereoccupied by mulberry trees for the feeding of silkworms, yielding to Japan 22,389,798 pounds of silk. Here aremore than 300,000,000 pounds of fiber and textile stuff taken from 1860 square miles of the cultivated land,cutting down the food producing area to 19,263 square miles and this area is made still smaller by devoting123,000 acres to tea, these producing in 1906 58,900,000 pounds, worth nearly five million dollars. Nor do thesestatements express the full measure of the producing power of the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, for, inaddition to the food and other materials named, there were also made $2,365,000 worth of braid from straw andwood shavings; $6,000,000 worth of rice straw bags, packing cases and matting; and $1,085,000 worth of waresfrom bamboo, willow and vine. As illustrating the intense home industry of these people we may consider the factthat the 5,453,309 households of farmers in Japan produced in 1906, in their homes as subsidiary work,$20,527,000 worth of manufactured articles. If correspondingly exact statistical data were available from China



and Korea a similarity full utilization of cultural possibilities would be revealed there.

This marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, bred of the stress of centuries, must not be permitted tolose virility through contact with western wasteful practices, now exalted to seeming virtues through the dazzlingbrilliancy of mechanical achievements. More and more must labor be dignified in all homes alike, and economy,industry and thrift become inherited impulses compelling and satisfying.

Cheap, rapid, long distance transportation, already well started in these countries, will bring with it a fullerutilization of the large stores of coal and mineral wealth and of the enormous available water power, and as aresult there will come some temporary lessening of the stress for fuel and with better forest management somerelief along the lines of building materials. But the time is not a century distant when, throughout the world, afuller, better development must take place along the lines of these most far−reaching and fundamental practices solong and so effectively followed by the Mongolian races in China, Korea and Japan. When the enormouswater−power of these countries has been harnessed and brought into the foot−hills and down upon the margins ofthe valleys and plains in the form of electric current, let it, if possible, be in a large measure so distributed as tobecome available in the country village homes to lighten the burden and lessen the human drudgery and yetincrease the efficiency of the human effort now so well bestowed upon subsidiary manufactures under theguidance and initiative of the home, where there may be room to breathe and for children to come up to manhoodand womanhood in the best conditions possible, rather than in enormous congested factories.

VIII. TRAMPS AFIELD

On March 31st we took the 8 A. M. train on the Shanghai−Nanking railway for Kunshan, situated thirty−twomiles west from Shanghai, to spend the day walking in the fields. The fare, second class, was eighty cents,Mexican. A third class ticket would have been forty cents and a first class, $1.60, practically two cents, one centand half a cent, our currency, per mile. The second class fare to Nanking, a distance of 193 miles, was $1.72, U.S. currency, or a little less than one cent per mile. While the car seats were not upholstered, the service was good.Meals were served on the train in either foreign or Chinese style, and tea, coffee or hot water to drink. Hot, wetface cloths were regularly passed and many Chinese daily newspapers were sold on the train, a traveler oftenbuying two.

In the vicinity of Kunshan a large area of farm land had been acquired by the French catholic mission at apurchase price of $40, Mexican, per mow, or at the rate of $103.20 per acre. This they rented to the Chinese.

It was here that we first saw, at close range, the details of using canal mud as a fertilizer, so extensively applied inChina. Walking through the fields we came upon the scene in the middle section of Fig. 92 where, close on theright was such a reservoir as seen in Fig. 58. Men were in it, dipping up the mud which had accumulated over itsbottom, pouring it on the bank in a field of windsor beans, and the thin mud was then over two feet deep at thatside and flowing into the beans where it had already spread two rods, burying the plants as the engraving shows.When sufficiently dry to be readily handled this would be spread among the beans as we found it being done inanother field, shown in the upper section of the illustration. Here four men were distributing such mud, which haddried, between the rows, not to fertilize the beans, but for a succeeding crop of cotton soon to be planted betweenthe rows, before they were harvested. The owner of this piece of land, with whom we talked and who wassuperintending the work, stated that his usual yield of these beans was three hundred catty per mow and that theysold them green, shelled, at two cents, Mexican, per catty. At this price and yield his return would be $15.48,gold, per acre. If there was need of nitrogen and organic matter in the soil the vines would be pulled green, afterpicking the beans, and composted with the wet mud. If not so needed the dried stems would be tied in bundles andsold as fuel or used at home, the ashes being returned to the fields. The windsor beans are thus an early cropgrown for fertilizer, fuel and food.


VIII. TRAMPS AFIELD 44

This farmer was paying his laborers one hundred cash per day and providing their meals, which he estimatedworth two hundred cash more, making twelve cents, gold, for a ten−hour day. Judging from what we saw andfrom the amount of mud carried per load, we estimated the men would distribute not less than eighty−four loadsof eighty pounds each per day, an average distance of five hundred feet, making the cost 3.57 cents, gold, per tonfor distribution.

The lower section of Fig. 92 shows another instance where mud was being used on a narrow strip bordering thepath along which we walked, the amount there seen having been brought more than four hundred feet, by one manbefore 10 A. M. on the morning the photograph was taken. He was getting it from the bottom of a canal ten feetdeep, laid bare by the out−going tide. Already he had brought more than a ton to his field.

The carrying baskets used for this work were in the form of huge dustpans suspended from the carrying poles bytwo cords attached to the side rims, and steadied by the hand grasping a handle provided in the back for thispurpose and for emptying the baskets by tipping. With this construction the earth was readily raked upon thebasket and very easily emptied from it by simply raising the hands when the destination was reached. Noarrangement could be more simple, expeditious or inexpensive for this man with his small holding. In this simplemanner has nearly all of the earth been moved in digging the miles of canal and in building the long sea walls. InShanghai the mud carried through the storm sewers into Soochow creek we saw being removed in the samemanner during the intervals when the tide was out.

In still another field, seen in Fig. 93, the upper portion shows where canal mud had been applied at a rateexceeding seventy tons per acre, and we were told that such dressings may be repeated as often as every two yearsthough usually at longer intervals, if other and cheaper fertilizers could be obtained. In the lower portion of thesame illustration may be seen the section of canal from which this mud was taken up the three earthen stairwaysbuilt of the mud itself and permitted to dry before using. Many such lines of stairway were seen during our tripsalong the canals, only recently made or in the process of building to be in readiness when the time for applyingthe mud should arrive. To facilitate collecting the mud from the shallow canals temporary dams may be thrownacross them at two places and the water between either scooped or pumped out, laying the bottom bare, as is oftendone also for fishing. The earth of the large grave mound seen across a canal in the center background of theupper portion of the engraving had been collected in a similar manner.

In the Chekiang province canal mud is extensively used in the mulberry orchards as a surface dressing. We havereferred to this practice in southern China, and Fig. 94 is a view taken south of Kashing early in April. The boatanchored in front of the mulberry orchard is the home of a family coming from a distance, seeking employmentduring the season for picking mulberry leaves to feed silkworms. We were much surprised, on looking back at theboat after closing the camera, to see the head of the family standing erect in the center, having shoved back asection of the matting roof.

The dressing of mud applied to this field formed a loose layer more than two inches deep and when compacted bythe rains which would follow would add not less than a full inch of soil over the entire orchard, and the weight peracre could not be less than 120 tons.

Another equally, or even more, laborious practice followed by the Chinese farmers in this province is the periodicexchange of soil between mulberry orchards and the rice fields, their experience being that soil long used in themulberry orchards improves the rice, while soil from the rice fields is very helpful when applied to the mulberryorchards. We saw many instances, when traveling by boat−train between Shanghai, Kashing and Hangchow, ofsoil being carried from rice fields and either stacked on the banks or dropped into the canal. Such soil was oftenesttaken from narrow trenches leading through the fields, laying them off in beds. It is our judgment that the soilthrown into the canals undergoes important changes, perhaps through the absorption of soluble plant foodsubstances such as lime, phosphoric acid and potash withdrawn from the water, or through some growth orfermentation, which, in the judgment of the farmer, makes the large labor involved in this procedure worth while.



The stacking of soil along the banks was probably in preparation for its removal by boat to some of the mulberryorchards.

It is clearly recognized by the farmers that mud collected from those sections of the canal leading through countryvillages, such as that seen in Fig. 10, is both inherently more fertile and in better physical condition than thatcollected in the open country. They attribute this difference to the effect of the village washing in the canal, wheresoap is extensively used. The storm waters of the city doubtless carry some fertilizing material also, althoughsewage, as such, never finds its way into the canals. The washing would be very likely to have a decidedflocculating effect and so render this material more friable when applied to the field.

One very important advantage which comes to the fields when heavily dressed with such mud is that resultingfrom the addition of lime which has become incorporated with the silts through their flocculation andprecipitation, and that which is added in the form of snail shells abounding in the canals. The amount of thesemay be realized from the large numbers contained in the mud recently thrown out, as seen in the upper section ofFig. 95, where the pebbly appearance of the surface is caused by snail shells. In the lower section of the sameillustration the white spots are snail shells exposed in the soil of a recently spaded field. The shells are by nomeans as numerous generally as here seen but yet sufficient to maintain the supply of lime.

Several species of these snails are collected in quantities and used as food. Piles containing bushels of the emptyshells were seen along the canals outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the shell and often sold by measureto be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips thespiral point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removedby suction when the lips are applied to the shell. In the canals there are also large numbers of fresh water eel,shrimp and crabs as well as fish, all of which are collected and used for human food. It is common, when walkingthrough the canal country, to come upon groups of gleaners busy in the bottoms of the shallow agricultural canals,gathering anything which may serve as food, even including small bulbs or the fleshy roots of edible aquaticplants. To facilitate the collection of such food materials sections of the canal are often drained in the manneralready described, so that gleaning may be done by hand, wading in the mud. Families living in houseboats makea business of fishing for shrimp. They trail behind the houseboat one or two other boats carrying hundreds ofshrimp traps cleverly constructed in such manner that when they are trailed along the bottom and disturb theshrimps they dart into the holes in the trap, mistaking them for safe hiding places.

On the streets, especially during festival days, one may see young people and others in social intercourse, busyingtheir fingers and their teeth eating cooked snails or often watermelon seeds, which are extensively sold and thuseaten. This custom we saw first in the streets of a city south of Kashing on the line of the new railway betweenHangchow and Shanghai. The first passenger train over the line had been run the day before our visit, which wasa festival day and throngs of people were visiting the nine−story pagoda standing on a high hill a mile outside thecity limits. The day was one of great surprises to these people who had never before seen a passenger train, andmy own person appeared to be a great curiosity to many. No boy ever scrutinized the face of a caged chimpanzeecloser, with purer curiosity, or with less consideration for his feelings than did a woman of fifty scrutinize mine,standing close in front, not two feet distant, even bending forward as I sat upon a bench writing at the railwaystation. People would pass their hands along my coat sleeve to judge the cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes.Walking through the street we passed many groups gathered about tables and upon seats, visiting or in businessconference, their fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked snails. Along the pathwayleading to the pagoda beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet,asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some other way physically disabled. We saw but one whoappeared capable of earning a living.

Travel between Shanghai and Hangchow at this time was heavy. Three companies were running trains, of six ormore houseboats, each towed by a steam launch, and these were daily crowded with passengers. Our train leftShanghai at 4:30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5:30 P. M. the following day, covering a distance along the canal



of something more than 117 miles. We paid $5.16, gold, for the exclusive use of a first−cabin, five−berthstateroom for myself and interpreter. It occupied the full width of the boat, lacking about fourteen inches offootway, and could be entered from either side down a flight of five steps. The berths were flat, naked woodenshelves thirty inches wide, separated by a partition headboard six inches high and without railing in front. Eachtraveler provided his own bedding. A small table upon which meals were served, a mirror on one side and a lampon the other, set in an opening in the partition, permitting it to serve two staterooms, completed the furnishings.The roof of the staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two tiers of berths, each thirtyinches wide, by board partitions six inches high. In these sections passengers spread their beds, sleeping headstogether, separated only by a headboard six inches high. The awning was only sufficiently high to permitpassengers to sit erect. Ventilation was ample but privacy was nil. Curtains could be dropped around the sides instormy weather.

Meals were served to each passenger wherever he might be. Dinner consisted of hot steamed rice brought in veryheavy porcelain bowls set inside a covered, wet, steaming hot wooden case. With the rice were tiny dishes,butterchip size, of green clover, nicely cooked and seasoned; of cooked bean curd served with shredded bamboosprouts; of tiny pork strips with bean curd; of small bits of liver with bamboo sprouts; of greens, and hot water fortea. If the appetite is good one may have a second helping of rice and as much hot water for tea as desired. Therewas no table linen, no napkins and everything but the tea had to be negotiated with chop sticks, or, these failing,with the fingers. When the meal was finished the table was cleared and water, hot if desired, was brought for yourhand basin, which with tea, teacup and bedding, constitute part of the traveler's outfit. At frequent intervals, up toten P. M., a crier walked about the deck with hot water for those who might desire an extra cup of tea, and againin the early morning.

At this season of the year Chinese incubators were being run to their full capacity and it was our good fortune tovisit one of these, escorted by Rev. R. A. Haden, who also acted as interpreter. The art of incubation is very oldand very extensively practiced in China. An interior view of one of these establishments is shown in Fig. 96,where the family were hatching the eggs of hens, ducks and geese, purchasing the eggs and selling the young ashatched. As in the case of so many trades in China, this family was the last generation of a long line whose liveshad been spent in the same work. We entered through their store, opening on the street of the narrow village seenin Fig. 10. In the store the eggs were purchased and the chicks were sold, this work being in charge of the womenof the family. It was in the extreme rear of the home that thirty incubators were installed, all doing duty and eachhaving a capacity of 1,200 hens' eggs. Four of these may be seen in the illustration and one of the baskets which,when two−thirds filled with eggs, is set inside of each incubator.

Each incubator consists of a large earthenware jar having a door cut in one side through which live charcoal maybe introduced and the fire partly smothered under a layer of ashes, this serving as the source of heat. The jar isthoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork and provided with a cover, as seen in the illustration. Inside the outerjar rests a second of nearly the same size, as one teacup may in another. Into this is lowered the large basket withits 600 hens' eggs, 400 ducks' eggs or 175 geese' eggs, as the case may be. Thirty of these incubators werearranged in two parallel rows of fifteen each. Immediately above each row, and utilizing the warmth of the airrising from them, was a continuous line of finishing hatchers and brooders in the form of woven shallow trayswith sides warmly padded with cotton and with the tops covered with sets of quilts of different thickness.

After a basket of hens' eggs has been incubated four days it is removed and the eggs examined by lighting, toremove those which are infertile before they have been rendered unsalable. The infertile eggs go to the store andthe basket is returned to the incubator. Ducks' eggs are similarly examined after two days and again after five daysincubation; and geese' eggs after six days and again after fourteen days. Through these precautions practically allloss from infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent of the fertile eggs are hatched, the infertile eggsranging from 5 to 25 per cent.



After the fourth day in the incubator all eggs are turned five times in twenty−four hours. Hens' eggs are kept in thelower incubator eleven days; ducks' eggs thirteen days, and geese' eggs sixteen days, after which they aretransferred to the trays. Throughout the incubation period the most careful watch and control is kept over thetemperature. No thermometer is used but the operator raises the lid or quilt, removes an egg, pressing the largeend into the eye socket. In this way a large contact is made where the skin is sensitive, nearly constant intemperature, but little below blood heat and from which the air is excluded for the time. Long practice permitsthem thus to judge small differences of temperature expeditiously and with great accuracy; and they maintaindifferent temperatures during different stages of the incubation. The men sleep in the room and some one is onduty continuously, making the rounds of the incubators and brooders, examining and regulating each according toits individual needs, through the management of the doors or the shifting of the quilts over the eggs in the broodertrays where the chicks leave the eggs and remain until they go to the store. In the finishing trays the eggs formrather more than one continuous layer but the second layer does not cover more than a fifth or a quarter of thearea. Hens' eggs are in these trays ten days, ducks' and geese' eggs, fourteen days.

After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long to require feeding they are ready for market and are thensorted according to sex and placed in separate shallow woven trays thirty inches in diameter. The sorting is donerapidly and accurately through the sense of touch, the operator recognizing the sex by gently pinching the anus.Four trays of young chickens were in the store fronting on the street as we entered and several women weremaking purchases, taking five to a dozen each. Dr. Haden informed me that nearly every family in the cities, andin the country villages raise a few, but only a few, chickens and it is a common sight to see grown chickenswalking about the narrow streets, in and out of the open stores, dodging the feet of the occupants and passers−by.At the time of our visit this family was paying at the rate of ten cents, Mexican, for nine hens' and eight ducks'eggs, and were selling their largest strong chickens at three cents each. These figures, translated into our currency,make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, and the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hundred, orthirteen eggs for six cents and seven chickens for nine cents.

It is difficult even to conceive, not to say measure, the vast import of this solution of how to maintain, in themillions of homes, a constantly accessible supply of absolutely fresh and thoroughly sanitary animal food in theform of meat and eggs. The great density of population in these countries makes the problem of supplying eggs tothe people very different from that in the United States. Our 250,600,000 fowl in 1900 was at the rate of three toeach person but in Japan, with her 16,500,000 fowl, she had in 1906 but one for every three people. Her numberper square mile of cultivated land however was 825, while in the United States, in 1900, the number of fowls persquare mile of improved farm land was but 387. To give to Japan three fowls to each person there would needs bean average of about nine to each acre of her cultivated land, whereas in the United States there were in 1900nearly two acres of improved farm land for each fowl. We have no statistics regarding the number of fowl inChina or the number of eggs produced but the total is very large and she exports to Japan. The large boat load ofeggs seen in Fig. 97 had just arrived from the country, coming into Shanghai in one of her canals.

Besides applying canal mud directly to the fields in the ways described there are other very extensive practices ofcomposting it with organic matter of one or another kind and of then using the compost on the fields. The nextthree illustrations show some of the steps and something of the tremendous labor of body, willingly andcheerfully incurred, and something of the forethought practiced, that homes may be maintained and thatgrandparents, parents, wives and children need neither starve nor beg. We had reached a place seen in Fig. 98,where eight bearers were moving winter compost to a recently excavated pit in an adjoining field shown in Fig.99.

Four months before the camera fixed the activity shown, men had brought waste from the stables of Shanghaififteen miles by water, depositing it upon the canal bank between layers of thin mud dipped from the canal, andleft it to ferment. The eight men were removing this compost to the pit seen in Fig. 99, then nearly filled. Near byin the same field was a second pit seen in Fig. 100, excavated three feet deep and rimmed about with the earthremoved, making it two feet deeper.



After these pits had been filled the clover which was in blossom beyond the pits would be cut and stacked uponthem to a height of five to eight feet and this also saturated, layer by layer, with mud brought from the canal, andallowed to ferment twenty to thirty days until the juices set free had been absorbed by the winter compostbeneath, helping to carry the ripening of that still further, and until the time had arrived for fitting the ground forthe next crop. This organic matter, fermented with the canal mud, would then be distributed by the men over thefield, carried a third time on their shoulders, notwithstanding its weight was many tons.

This manure had been collected, loaded and carried fifteen miles by water; it had been unloaded upon the bankand saturated with canal mud; the field had been fitted for clover the previous fall and seeded; the pits had beendug in the fields; the winter compost had been carried and placed in the pits; the clover was to be cut, carried bythe men on their shoulders, stacked layer by layer and saturated with mud dipped from the canal; the whole wouldlater be distributed over the field and finally the earth removed from the pits would be returned to them, that theservice of no ground upon which a crop might grow should be lost.

Such are the tasks to which Chinese farmers hold themselves, because they are convinced desired results willfollow, because their holdings are so small and their families so large. These practices are so extensive in Chinaand so fundamental in the part they play in the maintenance of high productive power in their soils that we madespecial effort to follow them through different phases. In Fig. 101 we saw the preparation being made to build oneof the clover compost stacks saturated with canal mud. On the left the thin mud had been dipped from the canal;way−farers in the center were crossing the foot−bridge of the country by−way; and beyond rises the conicalthatch to shelter the water buffalo when pumping for irrigating the rice crop to be fed with this plant food inpreparation. On the right were two large piles of green clover freshly cut and a woman of the family at one ofthem was spreading it to receive the mud, while the men−folk were coming from the field with more clover ontheir carrying poles. We came upon this scene just before the dinner hour and after the workers had left anotherphotograph was taken at closer range and from a different side, giving the view seen in Fig. 102. The mud hadbeen removed some days and become too stiff to spread, so water was being brought from the canal in the pails atthe right for reducing its consistency to that of a thin porridge, permitting it to more completely smear andsaturate the clover. The stack grew, layer by layer, each saturated with the mud, tramped solid with the bare feet,trousers rolled high. Provision had been made here for building four other stacks.

Further along we came upon the scene in Fig. 103 where the building of the stack of compost and the gathering ofthe mud from the canal were simultaneous. On one side of the canal the son, using a clam−shell form of dippermade of basket−work, which could be opened and shut with a pair of bamboo handles, had nearly filled themiddle section of his boat with the thin ooze, while on the other side, against the stack which was building, themother was emptying a similar boat, using a large dipper, also provided with a bamboo handle. The man on thestack is a good scale for judging its size.

We came next upon a finished stack on the bank of another canal, shown in Fig. 104, where our umbrella was setto serve as a scale. This stack measured ten by ten feet on the ground, was six feet high and must have containedmore than twenty tons of the green compost. At the same place, two other stacks had been started, each aboutfourteen by fourteen feet, and foundations were laid for six others, nine in all.

During twenty or more days this green nitrogenous organic matter is permitted to lie fermenting in contact withthe fine soil particles of the ooze with which it had been charged. This is a remarkable practice in that it is a veryold, intensive application of an important fundamental principle only recently understood and added to the scienceof agriculture, namely, the power of organic matter, decaying rapidly in contact with soil, to liberate from itsoluble plant food; and so it would be a great mistake to say that these laborious practices are the result ofignorance, of a lack of capacity for accurate thinking or of power to grasp and utilize. If the agricultural lands ofthe United States are ever called upon to feed even 1200 millions of people, a number proportionately less thanone−half that being fed in Japan today, very different practices from those we are now following will have beenadopted. We can believe they will require less human bodily effort and be more efficient. But the knowledge



which can make them so is not yet in the possession of our farmers, much less the conviction that plant feedingand more persistent and better directed soil management are necessary to such yields as will then be required.

Later, just before the time for transplanting rice, we returned to the same district to observe the manner ofapplying this compost to the field, and Fig. 105 is prepared from photographs taken then, illustrating the activitiesof one family, as seen during the morning of May 28th. Their home was in a near−by village and their holdingwas divided into four nearly rectangular paddies, graded to water level, separated by raised rims, and having anarea of nearly two acres. Three of these little fields are partly shown in the illustration, and the fourth in Fig. 160.In the background of the upper section of Fig. 105, and under the thatched shelter, was a native Chinese cow,blindfolded and hitched to the power−wheel of a large wooden−chain pump, lifting water from the canal andflooding the field in the foreground, to soften the soil for plowing. Riding on the power−wheel was a girl of sometwelve years, another of seven and a baby. They were there for entertainment and to see that the cow kept at work.The ground had been sufficiently softened so that the father had begun plowing, the cow sinking to her knees asshe walked. In the same paddy, but shown in the section below, a boy was spreading the clover compost with hishands, taking care that it was finely divided and evenly scattered. He had been once around before the plowingbegan. This compost had been brought from a stack by the side of a canal, and two other men were busy stillbringing the material to one of the other paddies, one of whom, with his baskets on the carrying pole appears inthe third section. Between these two paddies was the one seen at the bottom of the illustration, which had matureda crop of rape that had been pulled and was lying in swaths ready to be moved. Two other men were busy here,gathering the rape into large bundles and carrying it to the village home, where the women were threshing out theseed, taking care not to break the stems which, after threshing, were tied into bundles for fuel. The seed would beground and from it an oil expressed, while the cake would be used as a fertilizer.

This crop of rape is remarkable for the way it fits into the economies of these people. It is a near relative ofmustard and cabbage; it grows rapidly during the cooler portions of the season, the spring crop ripening before theplanting of rice and cotton; its young shoots and leaves are succulent, nutritious, readily digested and extensivelyused as human food, boiled and eaten fresh, or salted for winter use, to be served with rice; the mature stems,being woody, make good fuel; and it bears a heavy crop of seed, rich in oil, which has been extensively used forlights and in cooking, while the rape seed cake is highly prized as a manure and very extensively so used.

In the early spring the country is luxuriantly green with the large acreage of rape, later changing to a sea of mostbrilliant yellow and finally to an ashy grey when the leaves fall and the stems and pods ripen. Like the dairy cow,rape produces a fat, in the ratio of about forty pounds of oil to a hundred pounds of seed, which may be eaten,burned or sold without materially robbing the soil of its fertility if the cake and the ashes from the stems arereturned to the fields, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of which the oil is almost wholly composed coming fromthe atmosphere rather than from the soil.

In Japan rape is grown as a second crop on both the upland and paddy fields, and in 1906 she produced more than5,547,000 bushels of the seed; $1,845,000 worth of rape seed cake, importing enough more to equal a total valueof $2,575,000, all of which was used as a fertilizer, the oil being exported. The yield of seed per acre in Japanranges between thirteen and sixteen bushels, and the farmer whose field was photographed estimated that hisreturns from the crop would be at the rate of 640 pounds of seed per acre, worth $6.19, and 8,000 pounds of stemsworth as fuel $5.16 per acre.

IX. THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE

One of the most remarkable agricultural practices adopted by any civilized people is the centuries−long and wellnigh universal conservation and utilization of all human waste in China, Korea and Japan, turning it to marvelousaccount in the maintenance of soil fertility and in the production of food. To understand this evolution it must berecognized that mineral fertilizers so extensively employed in modern western agriculture, like the extensive use


IX. THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE 50

of mineral coal, had been a physical impossibility to all people alike until within very recent years. With this factmust be associated the very long unbroken life of these nations and the vast numbers their farmers have beencompelled to feed.

When we reflect upon the depleted fertility of our own older farm lands, comparatively few of which have seen acentury's service, and upon the enormous quantity of mineral fertilizers which are being applied annually to themin order to secure paying yields, it becomes evident that the time is here when profound consideration should begiven to the practices the Mongolian race has maintained through many centuries, which permit it to be said ofChina that one−sixth of an acre of good land is ample for the maintenance of one person, and which are feedingan average of three people per acre of farm land in the three southernmost of the four main islands of Japan.

From the analyses of mixed human excreta made by Wolff in Europe and by Kellner in Japan it appears that, asan average, these carry in every 2000 pounds 12.7 pounds of nitrogen, 4 pounds of potassium and 1.7 pounds ofphosphorus. On this basis and that of Carpenter, who estimates the average amount of excreta per day for theadult at 40 ounces, the average annual production per million of adult population is 5,794,300 pounds of nitrogen;1,825,000 pounds of potassium, and 775,600 pounds of phosphorus carried in 456,250 tons of excreta. Thefigures which Hall cites in Fertilizers and Manures, would make these amounts 7,940,000 pounds of nitrogen;3,070,500 pounds of potassium, and 1,965,600 pounds of phosphorus, but the figures he takes and calls highaverages give 12,000,000 of nitrogen; 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus.

In 1908 the International Concessions of the city of Shanghai sold to one Chinese contractor for $31,000, gold,the privilege of collecting 78,000 tons of human waste, under stipulated regulations, and of removing it to thecountry for sale to farmers. The flotilla of boats seen in Fig. 106 is one of several engaged daily in Shanghaithroughout the year in this service.

Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, taking his data from their records,informed us that the human manure saved and applied to the fields of Japan in 1908 amounted to 23,850,295 tons,which is an average of 1.75 tons per acre of their 21,321 square miles of cultivated land in their four main islands.

On the basis of the data of Wolff, Kellner and Carpenter, or of Hall, the people of the United States and of Europeare pouring into the sea, lakes or rivers and into the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000 pounds ofnitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus permillion of adult population annually, and this waste we esteem one of the great achievements of our civilization.In the Far East, for more than thirty centuries, these enormous wastes have been religiously saved and today thefour hundred million of adult population send back to their fields annually 150,000 tons of phosphorus; 376,000tons of potassium, and 1,158,000 tons of nitrogen comprised in a gross weight exceeding 182 million tons,gathered from every home, from the country villages and from the great cities like Hankow−Wuchang−Hanyangwith its 1,770,000 people swarming on a land area delimited by a radius of four miles.

Man is the most extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen uponevery living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled handsof a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet thisfertility is the substratum of all that is living. It must be recognized that the phosphate deposits which we arebeginning to return to our fields are but measures of fertility lost from older soils, and indices of processes still inprogress. The rivers of North America are estimated to carry to the sea more than 500 tons of phosphorus witheach cubic mile of water. To such loss modern civilization is adding that of hydraulic sewage disposal throughwhich the waste of five hundred millions of people might be more than 194,300 tons of phosphorus annually,which could not be replaced by 1,295,000 tons of rock phosphate, 75 per cent pure. The Mongolian races, with apopulation now approaching the figure named; occupying an area little more than one−half that of the UnitedStates, tilling less than 800,000 square miles of land, and much of this during twenty, thirty or perhaps fortycenturies; unable to avail themselves of mineral fertilizers, could not survive and tolerate such waste. Compelled



to solve the problem of avoiding such wastes, and exercising the faculty which is characteristic of the race, they"cast down their buckets where they were", as

*A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel wasseen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Castdown your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; Send us water!" ran up from thedistressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal forwater was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heedingthe injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazonriver. *Booker T. Washington, Atlanta address.

Not even in great cities like Canton, built in the meshes of tideswept rivers and canals; like Hankow on the banksof one of the largest rivers in the world; nor yet in modern Shanghai, Yokohama or Tokyo, is such wastepermitted. To them such a practice has meant race suicide and they have resisted the temptation so long that it hasceased to exist.

Dr. Arthur Stanley, Health officer of the city of Shanghai, in his annual report for 1899, considering this subjectas a municipal problem, wrote:

"Regarding the bearing on the sanitation of Shanghai of the relationship between Eastern and Western hygiene, itmay be said, that if prolonged national life is indicative of sound sanitation, the Chinese are a race worthy ofstudy by all who concern themselves with Public Health. Even without the returns of a Registrar−General it isevident that in China the birth rate must very considerably exceed the death rate, and have done so in an averageway during the three or four thousand years that the Chinese nation has existed. Chinese hygiene, when comparedwith medieval English, appears to advantage. The main problem of sanitation is to cleanse the dwelling day byday, and if this can be done at a profit so much the better. While the ultra−civilized Western elaborates destructorsfor burning garbage at a financial loss and turns sewage into the sea, the Chinaman uses both for manure. Hewastes nothing while the sacred duty of agriculture is uppermost in his mind. And in reality recent bacterial workhas shown that faecal matter and house refuse are best destroyed by returning them to clean soil, where naturalpurification takes place. The question of destroying garbage can, I think, under present conditions in Shanghai, beanswered in a decided negative. While to adopt the water−carriage system for sewage and turn it into the river,whence the water supply is derived, would be an act of sanitary suicide. It is best, therefore, to make use of whatis good in Chinese hygiene, which demands respect, being, as it is, the product of an evolution extending frommore than a thousand years before the Christian era."

The storage of such waste in China is largely in stoneware receptacles such as are seen in Fig. 109, which arehard−burned, glazed terra−cotta urns, having capacities ranging from 500 to 1000 pounds. Japan more often usessheltered cement−lined pits such as are seen in Fig. 110.

In the three countries the carrying to the fields is oftenest in some form of pail, as seen in Fig. 111, a pair of whichare borne swinging from the carrying pole. In applying the liquid to the field or garden the long handle dipper isused, seen in Fig. 112.

We are beginning to husband with some economy the waste from our domestic animals but in this we do notapproach that of China, Korea and Japan. People in China regularly search for and collect droppings along thecountry and caravan roads. Repeatedly, when walking through city streets, we observed such materials quicklyand apparently eagerly gathered, to be carefully stored under conditions which ensure small loss from eitherleaching or unfavorable fermentation. In some mulberry orchards visited the earth had been carefully hoed backabout the trunks of trees to a depth of three or four inches from a circle having a diameter of six to eight feet, andupon these areas were placed the droppings of silkworms, the moulted skins, together with the bits of leaves andstem left after feeding. Some disposition of such waste must be made. They return at once to the orchard all but



the silk produced from the leaves; unnecessary loss is thus avoided and the material enters at once the service offorcing the next crop of leaves.

On the farm of Mrs. Wu, near Kashing, while studying the operation of two irrigation pumps driven by two cows,lifting water to flood her twenty−five acres of rice field preparatory to transplanting, we were surprised to observethat one of the duties of the lad who had charge of the animals was to use a six−quart wooden dipper with abamboo handle six feet long to collect all excreta, before they fell upon the ground, and transfer them to areceptacle provided for the purpose. There came a flash of resentment that such a task was set for the lad, for wewere only beginning to realize to what lengths the practice of economy may go, but there was nothing irksomesuggested in the boy's face. He performed the duty as a matter of course and as we thought it through there was noreason why it should have been otherwise. In fact, the only right course was being taken. Conditions would havebeen worse if the collection had not been made. It made possible more rice. Character of substantial quality wasbuilding in the lad which meant thrift in the growing man and continued life for the nation.

We have adverted to the very small number of flies observed anywhere in the course of our travel, but itssignificance we did not realize until near the end of our stay. Indeed, for some reason, flies were more in evidenceduring the first two days on the steamship, out from Yokohama on our return trip to America, than at any timebefore on our journey. It is to be expected that the eternal vigilance which seizes every waste, once it has becomesuch, putting it in places of usefulness, must contribute much toward the destruction of breeding places, and itmay be these nations have been mindful of the wholesomeness of their practice and that many phases of theevolution of their waste disposal system have been dictated by and held fast to through a clear conception ofsanitary needs.

Much intelligence and the highest skill are exhibited by these old−world farmers in the use of their wastes. In Fig.113 is one of many examples which might be cited. The man walking down the row with his manure pailsswinging from his shoulders informed us on his return that in his household there were twenty to be fed; that fromthis garden of half an acre of land he usually sold a product bringing in $400, Mexican,−−$172, gold. The cropwas cucumbers in groups of two rows thirty inches apart and twenty−four inches between the groups. The plantswere eight to ten inches apart in the row. He had just marketed the last of a crop of greens which occupied thespace between the rows of cucumbers seen under the strong, durable, light and very readily removable trellises.On May 28 the vines were beginning to run, so not a minute had been lost in the change of crop. On the contrarythis man had added a month to his growing season by over−lapping his crops, and the trellises enabled him to feedmore plants of this type than there was room for vines on the ground. With ingenuity and much labor he had madehis half acre for cucumbers equivalent to more than two. He had removed the vines entirely from the ground; hadprovided a travel space two feet wide, down which he was walking, and he had made it possible to work about theroots of every plant for the purpose of hoeing and feeding. Four acres of cucumbers handled by American fieldmethods would not yield more than this man's one, and he grows besides two other crops the same season.

The difference is not so much in activity of muscle as it is in alertness and efficiency of the grey matter of thebrain. He sees and treats each plant individually, he loosens the ground so that his liquid manure dropsimmediately beneath the surface within reach of the active roots. If the rainfall has been scanty and the soil is dryhe may use ten of water to two of night soil, not to supply water but to make certain sufficiently deep penetration.If the weather is rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more concentrated, not to lighten the burden butto avoid waste by leaching and over saturation. While ever crowding growth he never overfeeds. Forethought,after−thought and the mind focused on the work in hand are characteristic of these people. We do not recall tohave seen a man smoking while at work. They enjoy smoking, but prefer to do this also with the attentionundivided and thus get more for their money.

On another date earlier in May we were walking in the fields without an interpreter. For half an hour we stoodwatching an old gardener fitting the soil with his spading hoe in the manner seen in Fig. 26, where the graves ofhis ancestors occupy a part of the land. Angleworms were extremely numerous, as large around as an ordinary



lead pencil and, when not extended, two−thirds as long, decidedly greenish in color. Nearly every stroke of thespade exposed two to five of these worms but so far as we observed, and we watched the man closely, pulverizingthe soil, he neither injured nor left uncovered a single worm. While he seemed to make no effort to avoid injuringthem or to cover them with earth, and while we could not talk with him, we are convinced that his action wascontinually guarded against injuring the worms.

They certainly were subsoiling his garden deeply and making possible a freer circulation of air far below thesurface. Their great abundance proved a high content of organic matter present in the soil and, as the worms atetheir way through it, passing the soil through their bodies, the yearly volume of work done by them was verygreat. In the fields flooded preparatory to fitting them for rice these worms are forced to the surface in enormousnumbers and large flocks of ducks are taken to such fields to feed upon them.

In another field a crop of barley was nearing maturity. An adjacent strip of land was to be fitted and planted. Theleaning barley heads were in the way. Not one must be lost and every inch of ground must be put to use. The grainalong the margin, for a breadth of sixteen inches, had been gathered into handfuls and skillfully tied, each with anunpulled barley stem, without breaking the straw, thus permitting even the grains in that head to fill and begathered with the rest, while the tying set all straws well aslant, out of the way, and permitted the last inch ofnaked ground to be fitted without injuring the grain.

In still another instance a man was growing Irish potatoes to market when yet small. He had enriched his soil; hewould apply water if the rains were not timely and sufficient, and had fed the plants. He had planted in rows onlytwelve to fourteen inches apart with a hill every eight inches in the row. The vines stood strong, straight, fourteeninches high and as even as a trimmed hedge. The leaves and stems were turgid, the deepest green and as primeand glossy as a prize steer. So close were the plants that there was leaf surface to intercept the sunshine falling onevery square inch of the patch. There were no potato beetles and we saw no signs of injury but the gardener wasscanning the patch with the eye of a robin. He spied the slightest first drooping of leaves in a stem; went after thedifficulty and brought and placed in our hand a cutworm, a young tuber the size of a marble and a stem cut halfoff, which he was willing to sacrifice because of our evident interest. But the two friends who had met were heldapart by the babel of tongues.

Nothing is costing the world more; has made so many enemies, and has so much hindered the forming offriendships as the inability to fully understand; hence the dove that brings world peace must fly on the wings of acommon language, and the bright star in the east is world commerce, rising on rapidly developing railway andsteamship lines, heralded and directed by electric communication. With world commerce must come mutualconfidence and friendship requiring a full understanding and therefore a common tongue. Then world peace willbe permanently assured. It is coming inevitably and faster than we think. Once this desired end is seriouslysought, the carrying of three generations of children through the public schools where the world language istaught together with the mother tongue, and the passing of the parents and grandparents, would effect the change.

The important point regarding these Far East people, to which attention should be directed, is that effectivethinking, clear and strong, prevails among the farmers who have fed and are still feeding the dense populationsfrom the products of their limited areas. This is further indicated in the universal and extensive use of plant ashesderived from fuel grown upon cultivated fields and upon the adjacent hill and mountain lands.

We were unable to secure exact data regarding the amount of fuel burned annually in these countries, and of ashesused as fertilizer, but a cord of dry oak wood weighs about 3500 pounds, and the weight of fuel used in the homeand in manufactures must exceed that of two cords per household. Japan has an average of 5.563 people perfamily. If we allow but 1300 pounds of fuel per capita, Japan's consumption would be 31,200,000 tons. In view ofthe fact that a very large share of the fuel used in these countries is either agricultural plant stems, with an averageash content of 5 per cent, or the twigs and even leaves of trees, as in the case of pine bough fuel, 4.5 per cent ofash may be taken as a fair estimate. On this basis, and with a content of phosphorus equal to .5 per cent, and of



potassium equal to 5 per cent, the fuel ash for Japan would amount to 1,404,000 tons annually, carrying 7020 tonsof phosphorus and 70,200 tons of potassium, together with more than 400,000 tons of limestone, which isreturned annually to less than 21,321 square miles of cultivated land.

In China, with her more than four hundred millions of people, a similar rate of fuel consumption would make thephosphorus and potassium returned to her fields more than eight times the amounts computed for Japan. On thebasis of these statements Japan's annual saving of phosphorus from the waste of her fuel would be equivalent tomore than 46,800 tons of rock phosphate having a purity of 75 per cent, or in the neighborhood of seven poundsper acre. If this amount, even with the potash and limestone added, appears like a trifling addition of fertility it isimportant for Americans to remember that even if this is so, these people have felt compelled to make the saving.

In the matter of returning soluble potassium to the cultivated fields Japan would be applying with her ashes theequivalent of no less than 156,600 tons of pure potassium sulphate, equal to 23 pounds per acre; while the limecarbonate so applied annually would be some 62 pounds per acre.

In addition to the forest lands, which have long been made to contribute plant food to the cultivated fields throughfuel ashes, there are large areas which contribute green manure and compost material. These are chiefly hill lands,aggregating some twenty per cent of the cultivated fields, which bear mostly herbaceous growth. Some 2,552,741acres of these lands may be cut over three times each season, yielding, in 1903, an average of 7980 pounds peracre. The first cutting of this hill herbage is mainly used on the rice fields as green manure, it being tramped intothe mud between the rows after the manner seen in Fig. 114.

This man had been with basket and sickle to gather green herbage wherever he could and had brought it to his ricepaddy. The day in July was extremely sultry. We came upon him wading in the water half way to his knees,carefully laying the herbage he had gathered between alternate rows of his rice, one handful in a place, with tipsoverlapping. This done he took the attitude seen in the illustration and, gathering the materials into a compactbunch, pressed it beneath the surface with his foot. The two hands smoothed the soft mud over the grass andrighted the disturbed spears of rice in the two adjacent hills. Thus, foot following foot, one bare length ahead, thesucceeding bunches of herbage were submerged until the last had been reached, following between alternate rowsonly a foot apart, there being a hill every nine to ten inches in the row and the hands grasping and being drawnover every one in the paddy.

He was renting the land, paying therefor forty kan of rice per tan, and his usual yield was eighty kan. This isforty−four bushels of sixty pounds per acre. In unfavorable seasons his yield might be less but still his rent wouldbe forty kan per tan unless it was clear that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him in securingthe crop. It is difficult for Americans to understand how it is possible for the will of man, even when spurred bythe love of home and family, to hold flesh to tasks like these.

The second and third cuttings of herbage from the genya lands in Japan are used for the preparation of compostapplied on the dry−land fields in the fall or in the spring of the following season. Some of these lands arepastured, but approximately 10,185,500 tons of green herbage grown and gathered from the hills contributesmuch of its organic matter and all of its ash to enrich the cultivated fields. Such wild growth areas in Japan are thecommons of the near by villages, to which the people are freely admitted for the purpose of cutting the herbage. Afixed time may be set for cutting and a limit placed upon the amount which may be carried away, which is done inthe manner seen in Fig. 115. It is well recognized by the people that this constant cutting and removal of growthfrom the hill lands, with no return, depletes the soils and reduces the amount of green herbage they are able tosecure.

Through the kindness of Dr. Daikuhara of the Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station at Tokyo we are able togive the average composition of the green leaves and young stems of five of the most common wild species ofplants cut for green manure in June. In each 1000 pounds the amount of water is 562.18 pounds; of organic



matter, 382.68 pounds; of ash, 55.14 pounds; nitrogen, 4.78 pounds; potassium, 2.407 pounds, and phosphorus,.34 pound. On the basis of this composition and an aggregate yield of 10,185,500 tons, there would be annuallyapplied to the cultivated fields 3463 tons of phosphorus and 24,516 tons of potassium derived from the genyalands.

In addition to this the run−off from both the mountain and the genya lands is largely used upon the rice fields,more than sixteen inches of water being applied annually to them in some prefectures. If such waters have thecomposition of river waters in North America, twelve inches of water applied to the rice fields of the three mainislands would contribute no less than 1200 tons of phosphorus and 19,000 tons of potassium annually.

Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, informed us that in 1908 Japanesefarmers prepared and applied to their fields 22,812,787 tons of compost manufactured from the wastes of cattle,horses, swine and poultry, combined with herbage, straw and other similar wastes and with soil, sod or mud fromditches and canals. The amount of this compost is sufficient to apply 1.78 tons per acre of cultivated land of thesouthern three main islands.

From data obtained at the Nara Experiment Station, the composition of compost as there prepared shows it tocontain, in each 2000 pounds, 550 pounds of organic matter; 15.6 pounds of nitrogen; 8.3 pounds of potassium,and 5.24 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis 22,800,000 tons of compost will carry 59,700 tons of phosphorusand 94,600 tons of potassium. The construction of compost houses is illustrated in Fig. 116, reproduced from alarge circular sent to farmers from the Nara Experiment Station, and an exterior of one at the Nara Station is givenin Fig. 117.

This compost house is designed to serve two and a half acres. Its floor is twelve by eighteen feet, renderedwatertight by a mixture of clay, lime and sand. The walls are of earth, one foot thick, and the roof is thatched withstraw. Its capacity is sixteen to twenty tons, having a cash value of 60 yen, or $30. In preparing the stack,materials are brought daily and, spread over one side of the compost floor until the pile has attained a height offive feet. After one foot in depth has been laid and firmed, 1.2 inches of soil or mud is spread over the surface andthe process repeated until full height has been attained. Water is added sufficient to keep the whole saturated andto maintain the temperature below that of the body. After the compost stacks have been completed they arepermitted to stand five weeks in summer, seven weeks in winter, when they are forked over and transferred to theopposite side of the house.

If we state in round numbers the total nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium thus far enumerated which Japanesefarmers apply or return annually to their twenty or twenty−one thousand square miles of cultivated fields, the casestands 385,214 tons of nitrogen, 91,656 tons of phosphorus and 255,778 tons of potassium. These values are onlyapproximations and do not include the large volume and variety of fertilizers prepared from fish, which have longbeen used. Neither do they include the very large amount of nitrogen derived directly from the atmospherethrough their long, extensive and persistent cultivation of soy beans and other legumes. Indeed, from 1903 to1906 the average area of paddy field upon which was grown a second crop of green manure in the form of somelegume was 6.8 per cent of the total area of such fields aggregating 11,000 square miles. In 1906 over 18 per centof the upland fields also produced some leguminous crop, these fields aggregating between 9,000 and 10,000square miles.

While the values which have been given above, expressing the sum total of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassiumapplied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan may be somewhat too high for some of the sources named, thereis little doubt that Japanese farmers apply to their fields more of these three plant food elements annually than hasbeen computed. The amounts which have been given are sufficient to provide annually, for each acre of the21,321 square miles of cultivated land, an application of not less than 56 pounds of nitrogen, 13 pounds ofphosphorus and 37 pounds of potassium. Or, if we omit the large northern island of Hokkaido, still new in itsagriculture and lacking the intensive practices of the older farm land, the quantities are sufficient for a mean



application of 60, 14 and 40 pounds respectively of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium per acre, and yet thematuring of 1000 pounds of wheat crop, covering grain and straw as water−free substance, removes from the soilbut 13.9 pounds of nitrogen, 2.3 pounds of phosphorus and 8.4 pounds of potassium, from which it may becomputed that the 60 pounds of nitrogen added is sufficient for a crop yielding 31 bushels of wheat; thephosphorus is sufficient for a crop of 44 bushels, and the potassium for a crop of 35 bushels per acre. Dr.Hopkins, in his recent valuable work on "Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture" gives, on page 154, a tablefrom which we abstract the following data:

APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM REMOVABLE PER ACRE ANNUALLY BY Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pounds. pounds. pounds. 100 bush. crop of corn 148 23 71 100 bush. crop of oats 97 16 68 50 bush. crop of wheat 96 16 58 25 bush. crop of soy beans 159 21 73 100 bush. crop of rice 155 18 95 3 ton crop of timothy hay 72 9 71 4 ton crop of clover hay 160 20 120 3 ton crop of cow pea hay 130 14 98 8 ton crop of alfalfa hay 400 36 1927000 lb. crop of cotton 168 29.4 82 400 bush. crop of potatoes 84 17.3 120 20 ton crop of sugar beets 100 18 157Annually applied in Japan, more than 60 14 40

We have inserted in this table, for comparison, the crop of rice, and have increased the crop of potatoes from threehundred bushels to four hundred bushels per acre, because such a yield, like all of those named, is quitepracticable under good management and favorable seasons, notwithstanding the fact that much smaller yields aregenerally attained through lack of sufficient plant food or water. From this table, assuming that a crop of maturedgrain contains 11 per cent of water and the straw 15 per cent, while potatoes contain 79 per cent and beets 87 percent, the amounts of the three plant food elements removable annually by 1000 pounds of crop have beencalculated and stated in the next table.

APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM REMOVABLE ANNUALLY PER 1,0000 POUNDS OF DRY CROP SUBSTANCE Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pounds. pounds. pounds. Cereals.Wheat 13.873 2.312 8.382Oats 13.666 2.254 9.580Corn 13.719 2.149 6.676 Legumes.Soy beans 30.807 4.070 14.147Cow peas 25.490 2.745 19.216Clover 23.529 2.941 17.647Alfalfa 29.411 2.647 14.118 Roots.Beets 19.213 3.462 30.192Potatoes 15.556 3.210 22.222 Grass.Timothy 14.117 1.765 13.922Rice 9.949 1.129 6.089

From the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan andfrom the data in these two tables it may be readily seen that these people are now and probably long have beenapplying quite as much of these three plant food elements to their fields with each planting as are removed with



the crop, and if this is true in Japan it must also be true in China. Moreover there is nothing in Americanagricultural practice which indicates that we shall not ultimately be compelled to do likewise.

X. IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE

On May 15th we left Shanghai by one of the coastwise steamers for Tsingtao, some three hundred miles farthernorth, in the Shantung Province, our object being to keep in touch with methods of tillage and fertilization,corresponding phases of which would occur later in the season there.

The Shantung province is in the latitude of North Carolina and Kentucky, or lies between that of San Franciscoand Los Angeles. It has an area of nearly 56,000 square miles, about that of Wisconsin. Less than one−half of thisarea is cultivated land yet it is at the present time supporting a population exceeding 38,000,000 of people. NewYork state has today less than ten millions and more than half of these are in New York city.

It was in this province that Confucius was born 2461 years ago, and that Mencius, his disciple, lived. Here, too,seventeen hundred years before Confucius' time, after one of the great floods of the Yellow river, 2297 B. C., andmore than 4100 years ago, the Great Yu was appointed "Superintendent of Public Works" and entrusted withdraining off the flood waters and canalizing the rivers.

Here also was the beginning of the Boxer uprising. Tsingtao sits at the entrance of Kiaochow Bay. Following thewar of Japan with China this was seized by Germany, November 14, 1897, nominally to indemnify for the murderof two German missionaries which had occurred in Shantung, and March 6th, 1898, this bay, to the high waterline, its islands and a "Sphere of Influence" extending thirty miles in all directions from the boundary, togetherwith Tsingtao, was leased to Germany for ninety−nine years. Russia demanded and secured a lease of Port Arthurat the same time. Great Britain obtained a similar lease of Weihaiwei in Shantung, while to FranceKwangchow−wan in southern China, was leased. But the "encroachments" of European powers did not stop withthese leases and during the latter part of 1898 the "Policy of Spheres of Influence" culminated in the internationalrivalry for railway concessions and mining. These greatly alarmed China and uprisings broke out very naturallyfirst in Shantung, among the people nearest of kin to the founders of the Empire. As might have been expected ofa patriotic, even though naturally peaceful people, they determined to defend their country against suchencroachments and the Boxer troubles followed.

Tsingtao has a deep, commodious harbor always free from ice and Germany is constructing here very extensiveand substantial harbor improvements which will be of lasting benefit to the province and the Empire. A pier fourmiles in length encloses the inner wharf, and a second wharf is nearing completion. Germany is also maintaininga meteorological observatory here and has established a large, comprehensive Forest Garden, under excellentmanagement, which is showing remarkable developments for so short a time.

Our steamer entered the harbor during the night and, on going ashore, we soon found that only Chinese andGerman were generally spoken; but through the kind assistance of Rev. W. H. Scott, of the American PresbyterianMission, an interpreter promised to call at my hotel in the evening, although he failed to appear. The afternoonwas spent at the Forest Garden and on the reforestation tract, which are under the supervision of Mr. Haas. TheForest Garden covers two hundred and seventy acres and the reforestation tract three thousand acres more. In thegarden a great variety of forest and fruit trees and small fruits are being tried out with high promise of the mostvaluable results.

It was in the steep hills about Tsingtao that we first saw at close range serious soil erosion in China; and thereturning of forest growth on hills nearly devoid of soil was here remarkable, in view of the long dry seasonswhich prevail from November to June, and Fig. 118 shows how destitute of soil the crests of granite hills maybecome and yet how the coming back of the forest growth may hasten as soon as it is no longer cut away. The


X. IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE 58

rock going into decay, where this view was taken, is an extremely coarse crystalline granite, as may be seen incontrast with the watch, and it is falling into decay at a marvelous rate. Disintegration has penetrated the rock farbelow the surface and the large crystals are held together with but little more tenacity than prevails in a bed ofgravel. Moisture and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily and the crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knifeblade, the rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been extensively carved along the sides ofthe hills with the aid of only pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock shows that layers of sediment existbetween the crystal faces, either washed down by percolating rain or formed through decomposition of thecrystals in place. The next illustration, Fig. 119, shows how large the growth on such soils may be, and in Fig. 120the vegetation and forest growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such soil surfaces and rock structureas are indicated in Figs. 118 and 119.

These views are taken on the reforestation tract at Tsingtao but most of the growth is volunteer, standing nowprotected by the German government in their effort to see what may be possible under careful supervision.

The loads of pine bough fuel represented in Fig. 80 were gathered from such hills and from such forest growth asare here represented, but on lands more distant from the city. But Tsingtao, with its forty thousand Chinese, andKiaochow across the bay, with its one hundred and twenty thousand more, and other villages dotting the narrowplains, maintain a very great demand for such growth on the hill lands. The wonder is that forest growth haspersisted at all and has contributed so much in the way of fuel.

Growing in the Forest Garden was a most beautiful wild yellow rose, native to Shantung, being used forlandscape effect in the parking, and it ought to be widely introduced into other countries wherever it will thrive. Itwas growing as heavy borders and massive clumps six to eight feet high, giving a most wonderful effect, with itsbrilliant, dense cloud of the richest yellow bloom. The blossoms are single, fully as large as the Rosa rugosa, withthe tips of the petals shading into the most dainty light straw yellow, while the center is a deep orange, thecontrast being sufficient to show in the photograph from which Fig. 121 was prepared. Another beautiful andstriking feature of this rose is the clustering of the blossoms in one−sided wreath−like sprays, sometimes twelveto eighteen inches long, the flowers standing close enough to even overlap.

The interpreter engaged for us failed to appear as per agreement so the next morning we took the early train forTsinan to obtain a general view of the country and to note the places most favorable as points for field study. Wehad resolved also to make an effort to secure an interpreter through the American Presbyterian College at Tsinan.Leaving Tsingtao, the train skirts around the Kiaochow bay for a distance of nearly fifty miles, where we pass thecity of the same name with its population of 120,000, which had an import and export trade in 1905 valued at over$24,000,000. At Sochen we passed through a coal mining district where coal was being brought to the cars inbaskets carried by men. The coal on the loaded open cars was sprinkled with whitewash, serving as a seal tosafe−guard against stealing during transit, making it so that none could be removed without the fact beingrevealed by breaking the seal. This practice is general in China and is applied to many commodities handled inbulk. We saw baskets of milled rice carried by coolies sealed with a pattern laid over the surface by sprinklingsome colored powder upon it. Cut stone, corded for the market, was whitewashed in the same manner as the coal.

As we were approaching Weihsien, another city of 100,000 people, we identified one of the deeply depressed,centuries−old roadways, worn eight to ten feet deep, by chancing to see half a dozen teams passing along it as thetrain crossed. We had passed several and were puzzling to account for such peculiar erosion. The teams gave theexplanation and thus connected our earlier reading with the concrete. Along these deep−cut roadways caravansmay pass, winding through the fields, entirely unobserved unless one chances to be close along the line or themovement is discovered by clouds of dust, one of the methods that has produced them, and we would not besurprised if gathering manure from them has played a large part also.

Weihsien is near one of the great commercial highways of China and in the center of one of the coal miningregions of the province. Still further along towards Tsinan we passed Tsingchowfu, another of the large cities of



the province, with 150,000 population. All day we rode through fields of wheat, always planted in rows, and inhills in the row east of Kaumi, but in single or double continuous drills westward from here to Tsinan. Thousandsof wells used for irrigation, of the type seen in Fig. 123, were passed during the day, many of them recently dug tosupply water for the barley suffering from the severe drought which was threatening the crop at the time.

It was 6:30 P. M. before our train pulled into the station at Tsinan; 7:30 when we had finished supper and engageda ricksha to take us to the American Presbyterian College in quest of an interpreter. We could not speak Chinese,the ricksha boy could neither speak nor understand a word of English, but the hotel proprietor had instructed himwhere to go. We plunged into the narrow streets of a great Chinese city, the boy running wherever he could,walking where he must on account of the density of the crowds or the roughness of the stone paving. We hadturned many corners, crossed bridges and passed through tunneled archways in sections of the massive city walls,until it was getting dusk and the ricksha man purchased and lighted a lantern. We were to reach the college inthirty minutes but had been out a full hour. A little later the boy drew up to and held conference with a policeman.The curious of the street gathered about and it dawned upon us that we were lost in the night in the narrow streetsof a Chinese city of a hundred thousand people. To go further would be useless for the gates of the missioncompound would be locked. We could only indicate by motions our desire to return, but these were notunderstood. On the train a thoughtful, kindly old German had recognized a stranger in a foreign land andvolunteered useful information, cutting from his daily paper an advertisement describing a good hotel. This gavethe name of the hotel in German, English and in Chinese characters. We handed this to the policeman, pointing tothe name of the hotel, indicating by motions the desire to return, but apparently he was unable to read in eitherlanguage and seemed to think we were assuming to direct the way to the college. A man and boy in the crowdapparently volunteered to act as escort for us. The throng parted and we left them, turned more corners into moreunlighted narrow alleyways, one of which was too difficult to permit us to ride. The escorts, if such they were,finally left us, but the dark alley led on until it terminated at the blank face, probably of some other portion of themassive city wall we had thrice threaded through lighted tunnels. Here the ricksha boy stopped and turned aboutbut the light from his lantern was too feeble to permit reading the workings of his mind through his face, and ourtongues were both utterly useless in this emergency, so we motioned for him to turn back and by some route wereached the hotel at 11 P. M.

We abandoned the effort to visit the college, for the purpose of securing an interpreter, and took the early trainback to Tsingtao, reaching there in time to secure the very satisfactory service of Mr. Chu Wei Yung, through thefurther kind offices of Mr. Scott. We had been twice over the road between the two cities, obtaining a general ideaof the country and of the crops and field operations at this season. The next morning we took an early train toTsangkau and were ready to walk through the fields and to talk with the last generations of more than fortyunbroken centuries of farmers who, with brain and brawn, have successfully and continuously sustained largefamilies on small areas without impoverishing their soil. The next illustration is from a photograph taken in one ofthese fields. We astonished the old farmer by asking the privilege of holding his plow through one round in hislittle field, but he granted the privilege readily. Our furrow was not as well turned as his, nor as well as we couldhave done with a two−handled Oliver or John Deere, but it was better than the old man had expected and won hisrespect.

This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, V−shaped piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a goodtwist which turned the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block forgauging the depth of furrow. The cost of this plow, to the farmer, was $2.15, gold, and when the day's work isdone it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the distance may be a mile or more, and carefully housed.Chinese history states that the plow was invented by Shennung, who lived 2737−2697 B. C. and "taught the art ofagriculture and the medical use of herbs". He is honored as the "God of Agriculture and Medicine."

Through my interpreter we learned that there were twelve in this man's family, which he maintained on fifteenmow of land, or 2.5 acres, together with his team, consisting of a cow and small donkey, besides feeding two pigs.This is at the rate of 192 people, 16 cows, 16 donkeys and 32 pigs on a forty−acre farm; and of a population



density equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys and 512 swine per square mile of cultivated field.

On another small holding we talked with the farmer standing at the well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating a littlepiece of barley 30 feet wide and 138 feet long. He owned and was cultivating but one and two−thirds acres ofland and yet there were ten in his family and he kept one donkey and usually one pig. Here is a maintenancecapacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs on a forty−acre farm; and a population density of 3840people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile. His usual annual sales in good seasons were equivalent invalue to $73, gold.

In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, barley, large and small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans orpeanuts. Much straw braid is manufactured in the province by the women and children in their homes, and thecargo of the steamer on which we returned to Shanghai consisted almost entirely of shelled peanuts in gunnysacks and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture of hats in Europe and America.

Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 24 inches annually, and this fact has played an importantpart in determining the agricultural practices of these very old people. In Fig. 123 is a closer view than Fig. 27 ofthe farmer watering his little field of barley. The well had just been dug over eight feet deep, expressly and solelyto water this one piece of grain once, after which it would be filled and the ground planted.

The season had been unusually dry, as had been the one before, and the people were fearing famine. Only 2.44inches of rain had fallen at Tsingtao between the end of the preceding October and our visit, May 21st, andhundreds of such temporary wells had been or were being dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fiftymiles of railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on the ground was irrigated, to release the land for oneto follow. The homes are in villages a mile or more apart and often the holdings or rentals are scattered, separatedby considerable distances, hence easy portability is the key−note in the construction of this irrigating outfit. Thebucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed with a paste of bean flour. The windlass turns like along spool on a single pin and the standard is a tripod with removable legs. Some wells we saw were sixteen ortwenty feet deep and in these the water was raised by a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope.

The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, as indicated by the mean of ten years' records at Tsingtao,obtained at the German Meteorological Observatory through the courtesy of Dr. B. Meyermanns, are given in thetable in which the rainfall of Madison, Wisconsin, is inserted for comparison.

Mean monthly rainfall. Mean rainfall In 10 days. Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao, Madison, Inches. Inches. Inches. Inches.January .394 1.56 .131 .520February .240 1.50 .080 .500March .892 2.12 .297 .707April 1.240 2.62 .413 .840May 1.636 3.62 .545 1.207June 2.702 4.10 .901 1.866July 6.637 3.90 2.212 1.300August 5.157 3.21 1.719 1.070September 2.448 3.15 .816 1.050October 2.258 2.42 .753 .807November .398 1.78 .132 .593December .682 1.77 .227 .590 −−−−−−−−−−−−Total 24.682 31.65

While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain during the year, against Wisconsin's more than 31 inches, therainfall during June, July and August in Shantung is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin receives but 11.2 inches.This greater summer rainfall, with persistent fertilization and intense management, in a warm latitude, are some of



the elements permitting Shantung today to feed 38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon whichWisconsin is yet feeding but 2,333,860. Must American agriculture ultimately feed sixteen people where it is nowfeeding but one? If so, correspondingly more intense and effective practices must follow, and we can neitherknow too well nor too early what these Old World people have been driven to do; how they have succeeded, andhow we and they may improve upon their practices and lighten the human burdens by more fully utilizingphysical forces and mechanical appliances.

As we passed on to other fields we found a mother and daughter transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fittedridges of nearly air−dry soil in a little field, the remnant of a table on a deeply eroded hillside, Fig. 124. Thehusband was bringing water for moistening the soil from a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant, carrying it onhis shoulder in two buckets, Fig. 125, across an intervening gulch. He had excavated four holes at intervals up thegulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended with stitches, he filled his pails, bailing in successionfrom one to the other in regular rotation.

The daughter was transplanting. Holding the slip with its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward strokeplowed a furrow in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a downward thrust, planted theslip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from anothergourd dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earthdrawn over this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper.

The father and mother were dressed in coarse garb but the daughter was neatly clad, with delicate hands decoratedwith rings and a bracelet. Neither of the women had bound feet. There were ten in his family; and on adjacentsimilar areas they had small patches of wheat nearly ready for the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and inastonishingly vigorous condition considering the extreme drought which prevailed. The potatoes were beingplanted under these extreme conditions in anticipation of the rainy season which then was fully due. The summerbefore had been one of unusual drought, and famine was threatened. The government had recently issued an edictthat no sheep should be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed for food. An old woman in one ofthe villages came out, as we walked through, and inquired of my interpreter if we had come to make it rain. Suchwas the stress under which we found these people.

One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that his usual yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty permow, equivalent to 21.3 bushels per acre. He was expecting the current season not more than one half thisamount. As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth compost which we shall describe later, mixing it with the grainand sowing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds per acre, which he valued, in our currency, at$8.60, or $3.22 per ton. A pile of such prepared compost is seen in Fig. 126, ready to be transferred to the field.The views show with what cleanliness the yard is kept and with what care all animal waste is saved. The cow anddonkey are the work team, such as was being used by the plowman referred to in Fig. 122. The mounds in thebackground of the lower view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems of the large millet,kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber. Thebuildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered with an earthen mortar worked up with chaff.

In another field a man plowing and fertilizing for sweet potatoes had brought to the field and laid down in pilesthe finely pulverized dry compost. The father was plowing; his son of sixteen years was following and scattering,from a basket, the pulverized dry compost in the bottom of the furrow. The next furrow covered the fertilizer, fourturned together forming a ridge upon which the potatoes were to be planted after a second and older son hadsmoothed and fitted the crest with a heavy hand rake. The fertilizer was thus applied directly beneath the row, atthe rate of 7400 pounds per acre, valued at $7.15, our currency, or $1.93 per ton.

We were astonished at the moist condition of the soil turned, which was such as to pack in the handnotwithstanding the extreme drought prevailing and the fact that standing water in the ground was more than eightfeet below the surface. The field had been without crop and cultivated. To the question, "What yield of sweet



potatoes do you expect from this piece of land?" he replied, "About 4000 catty," which is 440 bushels of 56pounds per acre. The usual market price was stated to be $1.00, Mexican, per one hundred catty, making the grossvalue of the crop $79.49, gold, per acre. His land was valued at $60, Mexican, per mow, or $154.80 per acre,gold.

My interpreter informed me that the average well−to−do farmers in this part of Shantung own from fifteen totwenty mow of land and this amount is quite ample to provide for eight people. Such farmers usually keep twocows, two donkeys and eight or ten pigs. The less well−to−do or small farmers own two to five mow and act assuperintendents for the larger farmers. Taking the largest holding, of twenty mow per family of eight people, as abasis, the density per square mile would be 1536 people, and an area of farm land equal to the state of Wisconsinwould have 86,000,000 people; 21,500,000 cows; 21,500,000 donkeys and 86,000,000 swine. These observationsapply to one of the most productive sections of the province, but very large areas of land in the province are notcultivable and the last census showed the total population nearly one−half of this amount. It is clear, therefore,that either very effective agricultural methods are practiced or else extreme economy is exercised. Both are true.

On this day in the fields our interpreter procured his dinner at a farm house, bringing us four boiled eggs, forwhich he paid at the rate of 8.3 cents of our money, but his dinner was probably included in the price. The nexttable gives the prices for some articles obtained by inquiry at the Tsingtao market, May 23rd, 1909, reduced toour currency.

CentsOld potatoes, per lb 2.18New potatoes, per lb 2.87Salted turnip, per lb .86Onions, per lb 4.10Radishes, bunch of 10 1.29String beans, per lb 11.46Cucumbers, per lb 5.78Pears, per lb 5.73Apricots, per lb 8.60Pork, fresh, per lb 10.33Fish, per lb 5.73Eggs, per dozen 5.16

The only items which are low compared with our own prices are salted turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of thearticles listed were out of season for the locality and were imported for the foreigners, turnips, radishes, pork, fishand eggs being the exceptions. Prof. Ross informs us that he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one cent ofour money.

Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, Mexican, or 43 cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnishinghis own meals. The usual wage for farm labor here was $8.60, per year, with board and lodging. We have referredto the wages paid by missionaries for domestic service. As servants the Chinese are considered efficient, faithfuland trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. League to intrust them with the purse for marketing, feelingthat they could be depended upon for the closest bargaining. Commonly, when instructed to procure a certainarticle, if they found the price one or two cash higher than usual they would select a cheaper substitute. Ifquestioned as to why instructions were not followed the reply would be "Too high, no can afford."

Mrs. League recited her experience with her cook regarding his use of our kitchen appliances. After fitting thekitchen with a modern range and cooking utensils, and working with him to familiarize him with their use, shewas surprised, on going into the kitchen a few days later, to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on therange and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furniture. When asked why he was not using the stovehis reply was "Take too much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of these people more than incurring of needlessexpense, extravagance in any form, or poor judgment in making purchases.



Daily we became more and more impressed by the evidence of the intense and incessant stress imposed by thedense populations of centuries, and how, under it, the laws of heredity have wrought upon the people, affectingconstitution, habits and character. Even the cattle and sheep have not escaped its irresistible power. Many times inthis province we saw men herding flocks of twenty to thirty sheep along the narrow unfenced pathways windingthrough the fields, and on the grave lands. The prevailing drought had left very little green to be had from theseplaces and yet sheep were literally brushing their sides against fresh green wheat and barley, never molestingthem. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the grain by an approaching train, but immediately theyreturned to their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump ofearth only being required to bring them back to their uninviting pastures.

In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen white goats were often seen feeding single file along thepathways, held by a cord like a string of beads, sometimes led by a child. Here, too, one of the most commonsights was the water buffalo grazing unattended among the fields along the paths and canal banks, with crops allabout, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery whilegazing at the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low−down Chinese houseboat. Something in the sky andthe vegetation along the canal bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant upthe bank with its fringe of grass, that we were gliding along Whitewater creek through familiar meadows and thatstanding up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there glided into view, framed in the doorway andprojected high against the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant water buffalo standing motionless as a statue onthe summit of a huge grave mound, lifted fully ten feet above the field. But in a flash this was replaced by acompanion scene, and with all its beautiful setting, which had been as suddenly fixed on the memory fourteenyears before in the far away Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn in the hills, suddenlyexposed a wild ox of Scotland similarly thrust against the sky from a small but isolated rocky summit, and then,outspeeding the wireless, recollection crossed two oceans and an intervening continent, bringing us back to Chinabefore a speed of five miles, per hour could move the first picture across the narrow doorway.

It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stalwart freighters referred to, Fig. 32, passed us on one of thepaths leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country villages, already eleven miles on their way with theirwheelbarrows loaded with matches made in Japan. Many of the wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai and othercities are from Shantung families, away for employment, expecting to return. During the harvest season, too,many of these people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employment, returning to their homes in winter.Alexander Hosie, in his book on Manchuria, states that from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese laborerscross to Newchwang every spring by steamer, others finding their way there by junks or other means, so that afterthe harvest season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than left that way in the spring, from which heconcludes that Shantung annually supplies Manchuria with agricultural labor to the extent of 30,000 men.

About the average condition of wheat in Shantung during this dry season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig.127, standing rather more than three feet high, as indicated by our umbrella between the rows. Beyond the wheatand to the right, grave mounds serrate the sky line, no hills being in sight, for we were in the broad plain built upfrom the sea between the two mountain islands forming the highlands of Shantung.

On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, some sixty miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but withinthe neutral zone extending thirty miles back from the high water line of the bay of the same name. Here theGermans had built a broad macadam road after the best European type but over it were passing the vehicles offorty centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the resistance to travel experienced by these men on thebetter road was enough less than that on the old paths they had left to convince them that the cost of constructionand maintenance would be worth while until vehicles and the price of labor change. It may appear strange thatwith a nation of so many millions and with so long a history, roads have persisted as little more than beatenfoot−paths; but modern methods of transportation have remained physical impossibilities to every people until thescience of the last century opened the way. Throughout their history the burdens of these people have been carriedlargely on foot, mostly on the feet of men, and of single men wherever the load could be advantageously divided.



Animals have been supplemental burden bearers but, as with the men, they have carried the load directly on theirown feet, the mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface.

For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel andtwo feet. No vehicle is used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no wheelbarrow in the worldpermits so high an efficiency of human power as the Chinese, as must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where nearlythe whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, massive wheel with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handlesof the barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the road is heavy, men or animals may aid indrawing, or even, when the wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain propelling power. It is only innorthern China, and then in the more level portions, where there are few or no canals, that carts have beenextensively used, but are more difficult to manage on bad roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those inManchuria, seen in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed rigidly to the axle which revolves with them, the bearingbeing in the bed of the cart. But new carts of modern type are being introduced.

In the extent of development and utilization of inland waterways no people have approached the Chinese. In thematter of land transportation they have clearly followed the line of least resistance for individual initiative, socharacteristic of industrial China.

There are Government courier or postal roads which connect Peking with the most distant parts of the Empire,some twenty−one being usually enumerated. These, as far as practicable, take the shortest course, are often cutinto the mountain sides and even pass through tunnels. In the plains regions these roads may be sixty toseventy−five feet wide, paved and occasionally bordered by rows of trees. In some cases, too, signal towers areerected at intervals of three miles and there are inns along the way, relay posts and stations for soldiers.

We have spoken of planting grain in rows and in hills in the row. In Fig. 130 is a field with the rows planted inpairs, the members being 16 inches apart, and together occupying 30 inches. The space between each pair is also30 inches, making five feet in all. This makes frequent hoeing practicable, which is begun early in the spring andis repeated after every rain. It also makes it possible to feed the plants when they can utilize food to the bestadvantage and to repeat the feeding if desirable. Besides, the ground in the wider space may be fitted, fertilizedand another crop planted before the first is removed. The hills alternate in the rows and are 24 to 26 inches fromcenter to center.

The planting may be done by hand or with a drill such as that in Fig. 131, ingenious in the simple mechanismwhich permits planting in hills. The husbandman had just returned from the field with the drill on his shoulderwhen we met at the door of his village home, where he explained to us the construction and operation of the drilland permitted the photograph to be taken, but turning his face aside, not wishing to represent a specific character,in the view. In the drill there was a heavy leaden weight swinging free from a point above the space between theopenings leading to the respective drill feet. When planting, the operator rocks the drill from side to side, causingthe weight to hang first over one and then over the other opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair ofrows.

Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of fields showed them ranging between 20 and 100, thedistance between the rows and between the hills as stated above. There were always a larger number of stalks perhill where the water capacity of the soil was large, where the ground water was near the surface, and where thesoil was evidently of good quality. This may have been partly the result of stooling but we have little doubt thatjudgment was exercised in planting, sowing less seed on the lighter soils where less moisture was available. In thepiece just referred to, in the illustration, an average hill contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a headvaried between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's estimate of 12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field wouldyield about twelve bushels of wheat per acre this unusually dry season. Our interpreter, whose parents lived nearKaomi, four stations further west, stated that in 1901, one of their best seasons, farmers there secured yields ashigh as 875 catty per legal mow, which is at the rate of 116 bushels per acre. Such a yield on small areas highly



fertilized and carefully tilled, when the rainfall is ample or where irrigation is practiced, is quite possible and inthe Kiangsu province we observed individual small fields which would certainly approach close to this figure.

Further along in our journey of the day we came upon a field where three, one of them a boy of fourteen years,were hoeing and thinning millet and maize. In China, during the hot weather, the only garment worn by the menin the field, was their trousers, and the boy had found these unnecessary, although he slipped into them while wewere talking with his father. The usual yield of maize was set at 420 to 480 catty per mow, and that of millet at600 catty, or 60 to 68.5 bushels of maize and 96 bushels of millet, of fifty pounds, per acre, and the usual pricewould make the gross earnings $23.48 to $26.83 per acre for the maize, and $30.96, gold, for the millet.

It was evident when walking through these fields that the fall−sowed grain was standing the drought far betterthan the barley planted in the spring, quite likely because of the deeper and stronger development of root systemmade possible by the longer period of growth, and partly because the wheat had made much of its growth utilizingwater that had fallen before the barley was planted and which would have been lost from the soil throughpercolation and surface evaporation. Farmers here are very particular to hoe their grain, beginning in the earlyspring, and always after rains, thoroughly appreciating the efficiency of earth mulches. Their hoe, seen in Fig.132, is peculiarly well adapted to its purpose, the broad blade being so hung that it draws nearly parallel with thesurface, cutting shallow and permitting the soil to drop practically upon the place from which it was loosened.These hoes are made in three parts; a wooden handle, a long, strong and heavy iron socket shank, and a blade ofsteel. The blade is detachable and different forms and sizes of blades may be used on the same shank. Themulch−producing blades may have a cutting edge thirteen inches long and a width of nine inches.

At short intervals on either hand, along the two hundred and fifty miles of railway between Tsingtao and Tsinan,were observed many piles of earth compost distributed in the fields. One of these piles is seen in Fig. 133. Theywere sometimes on unplanted fields, in other cases they occurred among the growing crops soon to be harvested,or where another crop was to be planted between the rows of one already on the ground. Some of these piles weresix feet high. All were built in cubical form with flat top and carefully plastered with a layer of earth mortar whichsometimes cracked on drying, as seen in the illustration. The purpose of this careful shaping and plastering we didnot learn although our interpreter stated it was to prevent the compost from being appropriated for use on adjacentfields. Such a finish would have the effect of a seal, showing if the pile had been disturbed, but we suspect otheradvantages are sought by the treatment, which involves so large an amount of labor.

The amount of this earth compost prepared and used annually in Shantung is large, as indicated by the cases cited,where more than five thousand pounds, in one instance, and seven thousand pounds in another, were applied peracre for one crop. When two or more crops are grown the same year on the same ground, each is fertilized, hencefrom three to six or more tons may be applied to each cultivated acre. The methods of preparing compost and offertilizing in Kiangsu, Chekiang and Kwangtung provinces have been described. In this part of Shantung, inChihli and north in Manchuria as far as Mukden, the methods are materially different and if possible even morelaborious, but clearly rational and effective. Here nearly if not all fertilizer compost is prepared in the villages andcarried to the fields, however distant these may be.

Rev. T. J. League very kindly accompanied us to Chengyang on the railway, from which we walked some twomiles, back to a prosperous rural village to see their methods of preparing this compost fertilizer. It was towardthe close of the afternoon before we reached the village, and from all directions husbandmen were returning fromthe fields, some with hoes, some with plows, some with drills over their shoulders and others leading donkeys orcattle, and similar customs obtain in Japan, as seen in Fig. 134. These were mostly the younger men. When wereached the village streets the older men, all bareheaded, as were those returning from the fields, and usually withtheir queues tied about the crown, were visiting, enjoying their pipes of tobacco.

Opium is no longer used openly in China, unless it be permitted to some well along in years with the habitconfirmed, and the growing of the poppy is prohibited. The penalties for violating the law are heavy and



enforcement is said to be rigid and effective. For the first violation a fine is imposed. If convicted of a secondviolation the fine is heavier with imprisonment added to help the victim acquire self control, and a thirdconviction may bring the death penalty. The eradication of the opium scourge must prove a great blessing toChina. But with the passing of this most formidable evil, for whose infliction upon China England was largelyresponsible, it is a great misfortune that through the pitiless efforts of the British−American Tobacco Companyher people are rapidly becoming addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish beyond excuse, filthy beyondmeasure, and unsanitary in its polluting and oxygen−destroying effect upon the air all are compelled to breathe. Ithas already become a greater and more inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever was.

China, with her already overtaxed fields, can ill afford to give over an acre to the cultivation of this crop and sheshould prohibit the growing of tobacco as she has that of the poppy. Let her take the wise step now when shereadily may, for all civilized nations will ultimately be compelled to adopt such a measure. The United States in1902 had more than a million acres growing tobacco, and harvested 821,000,000 pounds of leaf. This leafdepleted those soils to the extent of more than twenty eight million pounds of nitrogen, twenty−nine millionpounds of potassium and nearly two and a half million pounds of phosphorus, all so irrecoverably lost that evenChina, with her remarkable skill in saving and her infinite patience with little things, could not recover them forher soils. On a like area of field might as readily be grown twenty million bushels of wheat and if the twelvehundred million pounds of grain were all exported it would deplete the soil less than the tobacco crop ineverything but phosphorus, and in this about the same. Used at home, China would return it all to one or anotherfield. The home consumption of tobacco in the United States averaged seven pounds per capita in 1902. A likeconsumption for China's four hundred millions would call for 2800 million pounds of leaf. If she grew it on herfields two million acres would not suffice. Her soils would be proportionately depleted and she would be shortforty million bushels of wheat; but if China continues to import her tobacco the vast sum expended can neitherfertilize her fields nor feed, clothe or educate her people, yet a like sum expended in the importation of wheatwould feed her hungry and enrich her soils.

In the matter of conservation of national resources here is one of the greatest opportunities open to all civilizednations. What might not be done in the United States with a fund of $57,000,000 annually, the market price of theraw tobacco leaf, and the land, the labor and the capital expended in getting the product to the men who puff,breathe and perspire the noxious product into the air everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets,sidewalks, the floor of every public place and conveyance, and befoul the million spittoons, smoking rooms andsmoking cars, all unnecessary and should be uncalled for, but whose installation and up−keep the non−user aswell as the user is forced to pay, and this in a country of, for and by the people. This costly, filthy, selfish tobaccohabit should be outgrown. Let it begin in every new home, where the mother helps the father in refusing to set theexample, and let its indulgence be absolutely prohibited to everyone while in public school and to all ineducational institutions.

Mr. League had been given a letter of introduction to one of the leading farmers of the village and it chanced thatas we reached the entrance way to big home we were met by his son, just returning from the fields with his drillon his shoulder, and it is he standing in the illustration, Fig. 131, holding the letter of introduction in his hand.After we had taken this photograph and another one looking down the narrow street from the same point, we wereled to the small open court of the home, perhaps forty by eighty feet, upon which all doors of the one−storiedstructures opened. It was dry and bare of everything green, but a row of very tall handsome trees, close relativesof our cottonwood, with trunks thirty feet to the limbs, looked down into the court over the roofs of the lowthatched houses. Here we met the father and grandfather of the man with the drill, so that, with the boy carryingthe baby in his arms, who had met his father in the street gateway, there were four generations of males at ourconference. There were women and girls in the household but custom requires them to remain in retirement onsuch occasions.

A low narrow four−legged bench, not unlike our carpenter's sawhorse, five feet long, was brought into the courtas a seat, which our host and we occupied in common. We had been similarly received at the home of Mrs. Wu in



Chekiang province. On our right was the open doorway to the kitchen in which stood, erect and straight, the tallspare figure of the patriarch of the household, his eyes still shining black but with hair and long thin stragglingbeard a uniform dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it seems, ever becomes white with age. He seemed to haveassumed the duties of cook for while we were there be lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but wasalways the final oracle on any matter of difference of opinion between the younger men regarding answers toquestions. Two sleeping apartments adjoining the kitchen, through whose wide kang beds the waste heat from thecooking was conveyed, as described on page 142, completed this side of the court. On our left was the main streetcompletely shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the eaves of the house, while in front of us, adjoining thestreet, was the manure midden, a compost pit six feet deep and some eight feet square. A low opening in the streetwall permitted the pit to be emptied and to receive earth and stubble or refuse from the fields for composting,Against the pit and without partition, but cut off from the court, was the home of the pigs, both under a commonroof continuous with a closed structure joining with the sleeping apartments, while behind us and along thealley−way by which we had entered were other dwelling and storage compartments. Thus was the large family offour generations provided with a peculiarly private open court where they could work and come out for sun andair, both, from our standards, too meagerly provided in the houses.

We had come to learn more of the methods of fertilizing practiced by these people. The manure midden wasbefore us and the piles of earth brought in from the fields, for use in the process, were stacked in the street, wherewe had photographed them at the entrance, as seen in Fig. 135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys standat the extreme left; beyond them is a large pile of earth brought into the village and carefully stacked in thenarrow street; on the other side of the street, at the corner of the first building, is a pile of partly fermentedcompost thrown from a pit behind the walls. Further along in the street, on the same side, is a second large stackof soil where two boys are standing at either end and another little boy was in a near−by doorway. In front of thetree, on the left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him a small donkey and still another boy. Beyond thisboy stands a third large stack of soil, while still beyond and across the way is another pile partly composted.Notwithstanding the cattle in the preceding illustration, the donkey, the men, the boys, the three long high stacksof soil and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow street possessed a width of available travelway and acleanliness which would appear impossible. Each farmer's household had its stack of soil in the street, and inwalking through the village we passed dozens of men turning and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it forthe field.

The compost pit in front of where we sat was two−thirds filled. In it had been placed all of the manure and wasteof the household and street, all stubble and waste roughage from the field, all ashes not to be applied directly andsome of the soil stacked in the street. Sufficient water was added at intervals to keep the contents completelysaturated and nearly submerged, the object being to control the character of fermentation taking place.

The capacity of these compost pits is determined by the amount of land served, and the period of composting ismade as long as possible, the aim being to have the fiber of all organic material completely broken down, theresult being a product of the consistency of mortar.

When it is near the time for applying the compost to the field, or of feeding it to the crop, the fermented product isremoved in waterproof carrying baskets to the floor of the court, to the yard, such as seen in Fig. 126, or to thestreet, where it is spread to dry, to be mixed with fresh soil, more ashes, and repeatedly turned and stirred to bringabout complete aeration and to hasten the processes of nitrification. During all of these treatments, whether in thecompost pit or on the nitrification floor, the fermenting organic matter in contact with the soil is converting plantfood elements into soluble plant food substances in the form of potassium, calcium and magnesium nitrates andsoluble phosphates of one or another form, perhaps of the same bases and possibly others of organic type. If thereis time and favorable temperature and moisture conditions for these fermentations to take place in the soil of thefield before the crop will need it, the compost may be carried direct from the pit to the field and spread broadcast,to be plowed under. Otherwise the material is worked and reworked, with more water added if necessary, until itbecomes a rich complete fertilizer, allowed to become dry and then finely pulverized, sometimes using stone



rollers drawn over it by cattle, the donkey or by hand. The large numbers of stacks of compost seen in the fieldsbetween Tsingtao and Tsinan were of this type and thus laboriously prepared in the villages and then transportedto the fields, stacked and plastered to be ready for use at next planting.

In the early days of European history, before modern chemistry had provided the cheaper and more expeditiousmethod of producing potassium nitrate for the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks, much land and effortwere devoted to niter−farming which was no other than a specific application of this most ancient Chinesepractice and probably imported from China. While it was not until 1877 to 1879 that men of science came toknow that the processes of nitrification, so indispensable to agriculture, are due to germ life, in simple justice tothe plain farmers of the world, to those who through all the ages from Adam down, living close to Nature andworking through her and with her, have fed the world, it should be recognized that there have been those amongthem who have grasped such essential, vital truths and have kept them alive in the practices of their day. And sowe find it recorded in history as far back as 1686 that Judge Samuel Lewell copied upon the cover of his journal apractical man's recipe for making saltpeter beds, in which it was directed, among other things, that there should beadded to it "mother of petre", meaning, in Judge Lewell's understanding, simply soil from an old niter bed, but inthe mind of the man who applied the maternity prefix,−−mother,−−it must have meant a vital germ contained inthe soil, carried with it, capable of reproducing its kind and of perpetuating its characteristic work, belonging tothe same category with the old, familiar, homely germ, "mother" of vinegar. So, too, with the old cheesemakerwho grasped the conception which led to the long time practice of washing the walls of a new cheese factory withwater from an old factory of the same type, he must have been led by analogies of experience with things seen torealize that he was here dealing with a vital factor. Hundreds, of course, have practiced empyrically, but some onepreceded with the essential thought and we feel it is small credit to men of our time who, after ten or twenty yearsof technical training, having their attention directed to a something to be seen, and armed with compoundmicroscopes which permit them to see with the physical eye the "mother of petre", arrogate to themselves thediscovery of a great truth. Much more modest would it be and much more in the spirit of giving credit wherecredit is due to admit that, after long doubting the existence of such an entity, we have succeeded in confirming infullness the truth of a great discovery which belongs to an unnamed genius of the past, or perhaps to a hundred ofthem who, working with life's processes and familiar with them through long intimate association, saw in theseinvisible processes analogies that revealed to them the essential truth in such fullness as to enable them to buildupon it an unfailing practice.

There is another practice followed by the Chinese, connected with the formation of nitrates in soils, which againemphasizes the national trait of saving and turning to use any and every thing worth while. Our attention wascalled to this practice by Rev. A. E. Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. It rests upon the tendency of theearth floors of dwellings to become heavily charged with calcium nitrate through the natural processes ofnitrification. Calcium nitrate being deliquescent absorbs moisture sufficiently to dissolve and make the floor wetand sticky. Dr. Evans' attention was drawn to the wet floor in his own house, which be at first ascribed toinsufficient ventilation, but which be was unable to remedy by improving that. The father of one of his assistants,whose business consisted in purchasing the soil of such floors for producing potassium nitrate, used so much inChina in the manufacture of fireworks and gunpowder, explained his difficulty and suggested the remedy.

This man goes from house to house through the village, purchasing the soil of floors which have thus becomeovercharged. He procures a sample, tests it and announces what he will pay for the surface two, three or fourinches, the price sometimes being as high as fifty cents for the privilege of removing the top layer of the floor,which the proprietors must replace. He leaches the soil removed, to recover the calcium nitrate, and then pours theleachings through plant ashes containing potassium carbonate, for the purpose of transforming the calcium nitrateinto the potassium nitrate or saltpeter. Dr. Evans learned that during the four months preceding our interview thisman had produced sufficient potassium nitrate to bring his sales up to $80, Mexican. It was necessary for him tomake a two−days journey to market his product. In addition he paid a license fee of 80 cents per month. He mustpurchase his fuel ashes and hire the services of two men.



When the nitrates which accumulate in the floors of dwellings are not collected for this purpose the soil goes tothe fields to be used directly as a fertilizer, or it may be worked into compost. In the course of time the earth usedin the village walls and even in the construction of the houses may disintegrate so as to require removal, but in allsuch cases, as with the earth brick used in the kangs, the value of the soil has improved for composting and isgenerally so used. This improvement of the soil will not appear strange when it is stated that such materials areusually from the subsoil, whose physical condition would improve when exposed to the weather, converting it infact into an uncropped virgin soil.

We were unable to secure definite data as to the chemical composition of these composts and cannot say whatamounts of available plant food the Shantung farmers are annually returning to their fields. There can be littledoubt, however, that the amounts are quite equal to those removed by the crops. The soils appeared well suppliedwith organic matter and the color of the foliage and the general aspect of crops indicated good feeding.

The family with whom we talked in the village place their usual yields of wheat at 420 catty of grain and 1000catty of straw per mow,−−their mow was four−thirds of the legal standard mow−−the grain being worth 35 stringsof cash and the straw 12 to 14 strings, a string of cash being 40 cents, Mexican, at this time. Their yields of beanswere such as to give them a return of 30 strings of cash for the grain and 8 to 10 strings for the straw. Small milletusually yielded 450 catty of grain, worth 25 strings of cash, per mow, and 800 catty of straw worth 10 to 11strings of cash; while the yields of large millet they placed at 400 catty per mow, worth 25 strings of cash, and1000 catty of straw worth 12 to 14 strings of cash. Stating these amounts in bushels per acre and in our currency,the yield of wheat was 42 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of straw per acre, having a cash value of $27.09 forthe grain and $10.06 for the straw. The soy bean crop follows the wheat, giving an additional return of $23.22 forthe beans and $6.97 for the straw, making the gross earning for the two crops $67.34 per acre. The yield of smallmillet was 54 bushels of seed and 4800 pounds of straw per acre, worth $27.09 and $8.12 for seed and strawrespectively, while the kaoliang or large millet gave a yield of 48 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of stalks peracre, worth $19.35 for the grain, and $10.06 for the straw.

A crop of wheat like the one stated, if no part of the plant food contained in the grain or straw were returned to thefield, would deplete the soil to the extent of about 90 pounds of nitrogen, 15 pounds of phosphorus and 65 poundsof potassium; and the crop of soy beans, if it also were entirely removed, would reduce these three plant foodelements in the soil to the extent of about 240 pounds of nitrogen, 33 pounds of phosphorus and 102 pounds ofpotassium, on the basis of 45 bushels of beans and 5400 pounds of stems and leaves per acre, assuming that thebeans added no nitrogen to the soil, which is of course not true. This household of farmers, therefore, in order tohave maintained this producing power in their soil, have been compelled to return to it annually, in one form oranother, not less than 48 pounds of phosphorus and 167 pounds of potassium per acre. The 330 pounds ofnitrogen they would have to return in the form of organic matter or accumulate it from the atmosphere, throughthe instrumentality of their soy bean crop or some other legume. It has already been stated that they do add morethan 5000 to 7000 pounds of dry compost, which, repeated for a second crop, would make an annual applicationof five to seven tons of dry compost per acre annually. They do use, in addition to this compost, large amounts ofbean and peanut cake, which carry all of the plant food elements derived from the soil which are contained in thebeans and the peanuts. If the vines are fed, or if the stems of the beaus are burned for fuel, most of the plant foodelements in these will be returned to the field, and they have doubtless learned how to completely restore the plantfood elements removed by their crops, and persistently do so.

The roads made by the Germans in the vicinity of Tsingtao enabled us to travel by ricksha into the adjoiningcountry, and on one such trip we visited a village mill for grinding soy beans and peanuts in the manufacture ofoil, and Fig. 136 shows the stone roller, four feet in diameter and two feet thick, which is revolved about a verticalaxis on a circular stone plate, drawn by a donkey, crushing the kernels partly by its weight and partly by a twistingmotion, for the arm upon which the roller revolves is very short. After the meal had been ground the oil wasexpressed in essentially the same way as that described for the cotton seed, but the bean and peanut cakes aremade much larger than the cotton seed cakes, about eighteen inches in diameter and three to four inches thick.



Two of these cakes are seen in Fig. 137, standing on edge outside the mill in an orderly clean court. It is in thisform that bean cake is exported in large quantities to different parts of China, and to Japan in recent years, for useas fertilizer, and very recently it is being shipped to Europe for both stock food and fertilizer.

Nowhere in this province, nor further north, did we see the large terra cotta, receptacles so extensively used in thesouth for storing human excreta. In these dryer climates some method of desiccation is practiced and we found thegardeners in the vicinity of Tsingtao with quantities of the fertilizer stacked under matting shelters in thedesiccated condition, this being finely pulverized in one or another way before it was applied. The nextillustration, Fig. 138, shows one of these piles being fitted for the garden, its thatched shelter standing behind thegrandfather of a household. His grandson was carrying the prepared fertilizer to the garden area seen in Fig. 139,where the father was working it into the soil. The greatest pains is taken, both in reducing the product to a finepowder and in spreading and incorporating it with the soil, for one of their maxims of soil management is to makeeach square foot of field or garden the equal of every other in its power to produce. In this manner each littleholding is made to yield the highest returns possible under the conditions the husbandman is able to control.

From one portion of the area being fitted, a crop of artemisia had been harvested, giving a gross return at the rateof $73.19 per acre, and from another leeks had been taken, bringing a gross return of $43.86 per acre. Chinesecelery was the crop for which the ground was being fitted.

The application of soil as a fertilizer to the fields of China, whether derived from the subsoil or from the silts andorganic matter of canals and rivers, must have played an important part in the permanency of agriculture in theFar East, for all such additions have been positive accretions to the effective soil, increasing its depth and carryingto it all plant food elements. If not more than one−half of the weight of compost applied to the fields of Shantungis highly fertilized soil, the rates of application observed would, in a thousand years, add more than two millionpounds per acre, and this represents about the volume of soil we turn with the plow in our ordinary tillageoperations, and this amount of good soil may carry more than 6000 pounds of nitrogen, 2000 pounds ofphosphorus and more than 60,000 pounds of potassium.

When we left our hotel by ricksha for the steamer, returning to Shanghai, we soon observed a boy of thirteen orfourteen years apparently following, sometimes a little ahead, sometimes behind, usually keeping the sidewalk butslackening his pace whenever the ricksha man came to a walk. It was a full mile to the wharf. The boy evidentlyknew the sailing schedule and judged by the valise in front, that we were to take the out−going steamer and thathe might possibly earn two cents, Mexican, the usual fee for taking a valise aboard the steamer. Twenty men atthe wharf might be waiting for the job, but he was taking the chance with the mile down and back thrown in, andall for less than one cent in our currency, equivalent at the time to about twenty "cash". As we neared the steamerthe lad closed up behind but strong and eager men were watching. Twice he was roughly thrust aside and beforethe ricksha stopped a man of stalwart frame seized the valise and, had we not observed the boy thus unobtrusivelyentering the competition, he would have had only his trouble for his pains. Thus intense was the struggle here forexistence and thus did a mere lad put himself effectively into it. True to breeding and example he had spared nolabor to win and was surprised but grateful to receive more than he had expected.

XI. ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE

Time is a function of every life process, as it is of every physical, chemical and mental reaction, and thehusbandman is compelled to shape his operations so as to conform with the time requirements of his crops. Theoriental farmer is a time economizer beyond any other. He utilizes the first and last minute and all that arebetween. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always "long on time", never in a fret, never in a hurry.And why should he be when he leads time by the forelock, and uses all there is?

The customs and practices of these Farthest East people regarding their manufacture of fertilizers in the form of


XI. ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE 71

earth composts for their fields, and their use of altered subsoils which have served in their kangs, village walls anddwellings, are all instances where they profoundly shorten the time required in the field to affect the necessarychemical, physical and biological reactions which produce from them plant food substances. Not only do theythus increase their time assets, but they add, in effect, to their land area by producing these changes outside theirfields, at the same time giving their crops the immediately active soil products.

Their compost practices have been of the greatest consequence to them, both in their extremely wet, rice−culturemethods, and in their "dry−farming" practices, where the soil moisture is too scanty during long periods to permitrapid fermentation under field conditions. Western agriculturalists have not sufficiently appreciated the fact thatthe most rapid growth of plant food substances in the soil cannot occur at the same time and place with the mostrapid crop increase, because both processes draw upon the available soil moisture, soil air and soluble potassium,calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. Whether this fundamental principle of practical agriculture iswritten in their literature or not it is most indelibly fixed in their practice. If we and they can perpetuate theessentials of this practice at a large saving of human effort, or perpetually secure the final result in some moreexpeditious and less laborious way, most important progress will have been made.

When we went north to the Shantung province the Kiangsu and Chekiang farmers were engaged in another oftheir time saving practices, also involving a large amount of human labor. This was the planting of cotton inwheat fields before the wheat was quite ready to harvest. In the sections of these two provinces which we visitedmost of the wheat and barley were sowed broadcast on narrow raised lands, some five feet wide, with furrowsbetween, after the manner seen in Fig. 140, showing a reservoir in the immediate foreground, on whose bank isinstalled one of the four−man foot−power irrigation pumps in use to flood the nursery rice bed close by on theright. The narrow lands of broadcasted wheat extend back from the reservoir toward the farmsteads which dot thelandscape, and on the left stands one of the pump shelters near the canal bank.

To save time, or lengthen the growing season of the cotton which was to follow, this seed was sown broadcastamong the grain on the surface, some ten to fifteen days before the wheat would be harvested. To cover the seedthe soil in the furrows between the beds had been spaded loose to a depth of four or five inches, finely pulverized,and then with a spade was evenly scattered over the bed, letting it sift down among the grain, covering the seed.This loose earth, so applied, acts as a mulch to conserve the capillary moisture, permitting the soil to becomesufficiently damp to germinate the seed before the wheat is harvested. The next illustration, Fig. 141, is a closerview with our interpreter standing in another field of wheat in which cotton was being sowed April 22nd in themanner described, and yet the stand of grain was very close and shoulder high, making it not an easy task either tosow the seed or to scatter sufficient soil to cover it.

When we had returned from Shantung this piece of grain had been harvested, giving a yield of 95.6 bushels ofwheat and 3.5 tons of straw per acre, computed from the statement of the owner that 400 catty of grain and 500catty of straw had been taken from the beds measuring 4050 square feet. On the morning of May 29th thephotograph for Fig. 142 was taken, showing the same area after the wheat had been harvested and the cotton wasup, the young plants showing slightly through the short stubble. These beds had already been once treated withliquid fertilizer. A little later the plants would be hoed and thinned to a stand of about one plant per each squarefoot of surface. There were thirty−seven days between the taking of the two photographs, and certainly thirty dayshad been added to the cotton crop by this method of planting, over what would have been available if the grainhad been first harvested and the field fitted before planting, It will be observed that the cotton follows the wheatwithout plowing, but the soil was deep, naturally open, and a layer of nearly two inches of loose earth had beenplaced over the seed at the time of planting. Besides, the ground would be deeply worked with the two or fourtined hoe, at the time of thinning.

Starting cotton in the wheat in the manner described is but a special case of a general practice widely in vogue.The growing of multiple crops is the rule throughout these countries wherever the climate permits. Sometimes asmany as three crops occupy the same field in recurrent rows, but of different dates of planting and in different


XI. ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE 72

stages of maturity. Reference has been made to the overlapping and alternation of cucumbers with greens. Thegeneral practice of planting nearly all crops in rows lends itself readily to systems of multiple cropping, and theseto the fullest possible utilization of every minute of the growing season and of the time of the family in caring forthe crops. In the field, Fig. 143, a crop of winter wheat was nearing maturity, a crop of windsor beans was abouttwo−thirds grown, and cotton had just been planted, April 22nd. This field had been thrown into ridges some fivefeet wide with a twelve inch furrow between them. Two rows of wheat eight inches wide, planted two feetbetween centers occupied the crest of the ridge, leaving a strip sixteen inches wide, seen in the upper section, (1)for tillage, (2) then fertilization and (3) finally the row of cotton planted just before the wheat was harvested.Against the furrow on each side was a row of windsor beans, seen in the lower view, hiding the furrow, whichwas matured some time after the wheat was harvested and before the cotton was very large. A late fall cropsometimes follows the windsor beans after a period of tillage and fertilization, making four in one year. With sucha succession fertilization for each crop, and an abundance of soil moisture are required to give the largest returnsfrom the soil.

In another plan winter wheat or barley may grow side by side with a green crop, such as the "Chinese clover"(Medicago denticulata, Willd.) for soil fertilizer, as was the case in Fig. 144, to be turned under and fertilize for acrop of cotton planted in rows on either side of a crop of barley. After the barley had been harvested the ground itoccupied would be tilled and further fertilized, and when the cotton was nearing maturity a crop of rape might begrown, from which "salted cabbage" would be prepared for winter use.

Multiple crops are grown as far north in Chihli as Tientsin and Peking, these being oftenest wheat, maize, largeand small millet and soy beans, and this, too, where the soil is less fertile and where the annual rainfall is onlyabout twenty−five inches, the rainy season beginning in late June or early July, and Fig. 145 shows one of thesefields as it appeared June 14th, where two rows of wheat and two of large millet were planted in alternating pairs,the rows being about twenty−eight inches apart. The wheat was ready to harvest but the straw was unusually shortbecause growing on a light sandy loam in a season of exceptional drought, but little more than two inches of rainhaving fallen after January 1st of that year.

The piles of pulverized dry−earth compost seen between the rows had been brought for use on the groundoccupied by the wheat when that was removed. The wheat would be pulled, tied in bundles, taken to the villageand the roots cut off, for making compost, as in Fig. 146, which shows the family engaged in cutting the rootsfrom the small bundles of wheat, using a long straight knife blade, fixed at one end, and thrust downward uponthe bundle with lever pressure. These roots, if not used as fuel, would be transferred to the compost pit in theenclosure seen in Fig. 147, whose walls were built of earth brick. Here, with any other waste litter, manure orashes, they would be permitted to decay under water until the fiber had been destroyed, thus permitting it to beincorporated with soil and applied to the fields, rich in soluble plant food and in a condition which would notinterfere with the capillary movement of soil moisture, the work going on outside the field where the changescould occur unimpeded and without interfering with the growth of crops on the ground.

In this system of combined intertillage and multiple cropping the oriental farmer thus takes advantage of whatevergood may result from rotation or succession of crops, whether these be physical, vito−chemical or biological. Ifplants are mutually helpful through close association of their root systems in the soil, as some believe may be thecase, this growing of different species in close juxtaposition would seem to provide the opportunity, but the otheradvantages which have been pointed out are so evident and so important that they, rather than this, have doubtlessled to the practice of growing different crops in close recurrent rows.

XII. RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT

The basal food crop of the people of China, Korea and Japan is rice, and the mean consumption in Japan, for thefive years ending 1906, per capita and per annum, was 302 pounds. Of Japan's 175,428 square miles she devoted,


XII. RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT 73

in 1906, 12,856 to the rice crop. Her average yield of water rice on 12,534 square miles exceeded 33 bushels peracre, and the dry land rice averaged 18 bushels per acre on 321 square miles. In the Hokkaido, as far north asnorthern Illinois, Japan harvested 1,780,000 bushels of water rice from 53,000 acres.

In Szechwan province, China, Consul−General Hosie places the yield of water rice on the plains land at 44bushels per acre, and that of the dry land rice at 22 bushels. Data given us in China show an average yield of 42bushels of water rice per acre, while the average yield of wheat was 25 bushels per acre, the normal yield in Japanbeing about 17 bushels.

If the rice eaten per capita in China proper and Korea is equal to that in Japan the annual consumption for thethree nations, using the round number 300 pounds per capita per annum, would be:

Population. Consumption. China 410,000,000 61,500,000 tons Korea 12,000,000 1,800,000 tons Japan 53,000,000 7,950 000 tons −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Total 475,000,000 71,250,000 tons

If the ratio of irrigated to dry land rice in Korea and China proper is the same as that in Japan, and if the meanyield of rice per acre in these countries were forty bushels for the water rice and twenty bushels for the dry landrice, the acreage required to give this production would be:

Area. Water rice, Dry land rice, sq. miles. sq. miles.In China 78,073 4,004In Korea 2,285 117In Japan 12,534 321 −−−−−−− −−−−−−Sum 92,892 4,442Total 97,334

Our observations along the four hundred miles of railway in Korea between Antung, Seoul and Fusan, suggestthat the land under rice in this country must be more rather than less than that computed, and the square miles ofcanalized land in China, as indicated on pages 97 to 102, would indicate an acreage of rice for her quite as largeas estimated.

In the three main islands of Japan more than fifty per cent of the cultivated land produces a crop of water riceeach year and 7.96 per cent of the entire land area of the Empire, omitting far−north Karafuto. In Formosa and insouthern China large areas produce two crops each year. At the large mean yield used in the computation theestimated acreage of rice in China proper amounts to 5.93 per cent of her total area and this is 7433 square milesgreater than the acreage of wheat in the United States in 1907. Our yield of wheat, however, was but 19,000,000tons, while China's output of rice was certainly double and probably three times this amount from nearly the sameacreage of land; and notwithstanding this large production per acre, more than fifty per cent, possibly as high asseventy−five per cent, of the same land matures at least one other crop the same year, and much of this may bewheat or barley, both chiefly consumed as human food.

Had the Mongolian races spread to and developed in North America instead of, or as well as, in eastern Asia,there might have been a Grand Canal, something as suggested in Fig. 148, from the Rio Grande to the mouth ofthe Ohio river and from the Mississippi to Chesapeake Bay, constituting more than two thousand miles of inlandwater−way, serving commerce, holding up and redistributing both the run−off water and the wasting fertility ofsoil erosion, spreading them over 200,000 square miles of thoroughly canalized coastal plains, so many of which



are now impoverished lands, made so by the intolerable waste of a vaunted civilization. And who shall venture toenumerate the increase in the tonnage of sugar, bales of cotton, sacks of rice, boxes of oranges, baskets ofpeaches, and in the trainloads of cabbage, tomatoes and celery such husbanding would make possible through alltime; or number the increased millions these could feed and clothe? We may prohibit the exportation of ourphosphorus, grind our limestone, and apply them to our fields, but this alone is only temporizing with the future.The more we produce, the more numerous our millions, the faster must present practices speed the waste to thesea, from whence neither money nor prayer can call them back.

If the United States is to endure; if we shall project our history even through four or five thousand years as theMongolian nations have done, and if that history shall be written in continuous peace, free from periods ofwide−spread famine or pestilence, this nation must orient itself; it must square its practices with a conservation ofresources which can make endurance possible. Intensifying cultural methods but intensifies the digestion,assimilation and exhaustion of the surface soil, from which life springs. Multiple cropping, closer stands on theground and stronger growth, all mean the transpiration of much more water per acre through the crops, and thiscan only be rendered possible through a redistribution of the run−off and the adoption of irrigation practices inhumid climates where water exists in abundance. Sooner or later we must adopt a national policy which shallmore completely conserve our water resources, utilizing them not only for power and transportation, but primarilyfor the maintenance of soil fertility and greater crop production through supplemental irrigation, and all thesegreat national interests should be considered collectively, broadly, and with a view to the fullest and best possiblecoordination. China, Korea and Japan long ago struck the keynote of permanent agriculture but the time has nowcome when they can and will make great improvements, and it remains for us and other nations to profit by theirexperience, to adopt and adapt what is good in their practice and help in a world movement for the introduction ofnew and improved methods.

In selecting rice as their staple crop; in developing and maintaining their systems of combined irrigation anddrainage, notwithstanding they have a large summer rainfall; in their systems of multiple cropping; in theirextensive and persistent use of legumes; in their rotations for green manure to maintain the humus of their soilsand for composting; and in the almost religious fidelity with which they have returned to their fields every form ofwaste which can replace plant food removed by the crops, these nations have demonstrated a grasp of essentialsand of fundamental principles which may well cause western nations to pause and reflect.

While this country need not and could not now adopt their laborious methods of rice culture, and while, let ushope, those who come after us may never be compelled to do so, it is nevertheless quite worth while to study, forthe sake of the principles involved, the practices they have been led to adopt.

Great as is the acreage of land in rice in these countries but little, relatively, is of the dry land type, and the fieldsupon which most of the rice grows have all been graded to a water level and surrounded by low, narrow raisedrims, such as may be seen in Fig. 149 and in Fig. 150, where three men are at work on their foot−power pump,flooding fields preparatory to transplanting the rice. If the country was not level then the slopes have been gradedinto horizontal terraces varying in size according to the steepness of the areas in which they were cut. We sawthese often no larger than the floor of a small room, and Professor Ross informed me that he walked past those inthe interior of China no larger than a dining table and that he saw one bearing its crop of rice, surrounded by itsrim and holding water, yet barely larger than a good napkin. The average area of the paddy field in Japan isofficially reported at 1.14 se, or an area of but 31 by 40 feet. Excluding Hokkaido, Formosa and Karafuto,fifty−three per cent of the irrigated rice lands in Japan are in allotments smaller than one−eighth of an acre, andseventy−four per cent of other cultivated lands are held in areas less than one−fourth of an acre, and each of thesemay be further subdivided. The next two illustrations, Figs. 151 and 152, give a good idea both of the small sizeof the rice fields and of the terracing which has been done to secure the water level basins. The house standingnear the center of Fig. 151 is a good scale for judging both the size of the paddies and the slope of the valley. Thedistance between the rows of rice is scarcely one foot, hence counting these in the foreground may serve asanother measure. There are more than twenty little fields shown in this engraving in front of the house and



reaching but half way to it, and the house was less than five hundred feet from the camera.

There are more than eleven thousand square miles of fields thus graded in the three main islands of Japan, eachprovided with rims, with water supply and drainage channels, all carefully kept in the best of repair. The morelevel areas, too, in each of the three countries, have been similarly thrown into water level basins, comparativelyfew of which cover large areas, because nearly always the holdings are small. All of the earth excavated from thecanals and drainage channels has been leveled over the fields unless needed for levees or dikes, so that theoriginal labor of construction, added to that of maintenance, makes a total far beyond our comprehension andnearly all of it is the product of human effort.

The laying out and shaping of so many fields into these level basins brings to the three nations an enormousaggregate annual asset, a large proportion of which western nations are not yet utilizing. The greatest gain comesfrom the unfailing higher yields made possible by providing an abundance of water through which more plantfood can be utilized, thus providing higher average yields. The waters used, coming as they do largely from theuncultivated hills and mountain lands, carrying both dissolved and suspended matters, make positive annualadditions of dissolved limestone and plant food elements to the fields which in the aggregate have been verylarge, through the persistent repetitions which have prevailed for centuries. If the yearly application of such waterto the rice fields is but sixteen inches, and this has the average composition quoted by Merrill for rivers of NorthAmerica, taking into account neither suspended matter nor the absorption of potassium and phosphorus by it, eachten thousand square miles would receive, dissolved in the water, substances containing some 1,400 tons ofphosphorus; 23,000 tons of potassium; 27,000 tons of nitrogen; and 48,000 tons of sulphur. In addition, there arebrought to the fields some 216,000 tons of dissolved organic matter and a still larger weight of dissolvedlimestone, so necessary in neutralizing the acidity of soils, amounting to 1,221,000 tons; and such savings havebeen maintained in China, Korea and Japan on more than five, and possibly more than nine, times the tenthousand square miles, through centuries. The phosphorus thus turned upon ninety thousand square miles wouldaggregate nearly thirteen million tons in a thousand years, which is less than the time the practice has beenmaintained, and is more phosphorus than would be carried in the entire rock phosphate thus far mined in theUnited States, were it all seventy−five per cent pure.

The canalization of fifty thousand square miles of our Gulf and Atlantic coastal plain, and the utilization on thefields of the silts and organic matter, together with the water, would mean turning to account a vast tonnage ofplant food which is now wasting into the sea, and a correspondingly great increase of crop yield. There ought, andit would seem there must some time be provided a way for sending to the sandy plains of Florida, and to the sandylands between there and the Mississippi, large volumes of the rich silt and organic matter from this and otherrivers, aside from that which should be applied systematically to building above flood plain the lands of the deltawhich are subject to overflow or are too low to permit adequate drainage.

It may appear to some that the application of such large volumes of water to fields, especially in countries ofheavy rainfall, must result in great loss of plant food through leaching and surface drainage. But under theremarkable practices of these three nations this is certainly not the case and it is highly important that our peopleshould understand and appreciate the principles which underlie the practices they have almost uniformly adoptedon the areas devoted to rice irrigation. In the first place, their paddy fields are under−drained so that most of thewater either leaves the soil through the crop, by surface evaporation, or it percolates through the subsoil intoshallow drains. When water is passed directly from one rice paddy to another it is usually permitted some timeafter fertilization, when both soil and crop have had time to appropriate or fix the soluble plant food substances.Besides this, water is not turned upon the fields until the time for transplanting the rice, when the plants arealready provided with a strong root system and are capable of at once appropriating any soluble plant food whichmay develop about their roots or be carried downward over them.

Although the drains are of the surface type and but eighteen inches to three feet in depth, they are sufficientlynumerous and close so that, although the soil is continuously nearly filled with water, there is a steady percolation



of the fresh, fully aerated water carrying an abundance of oxygen into the soil to meet the needs of the roots, sothat watermelons, egg plants, musk melons and taro are grown in the rotations on the small paddies among theirrigated rice after the manner seen in the illustrations. In Fig. 153 each double row of egg plants is separated fromthe next by a narrow shallow trench which connects with a head drain and in which water was standing withinfourteen inches of the surface. The same was true in the case of the watermelons seen in Fig. 154, where the vinesare growing on a thick layer of straw mulch which holds them from the moist soil and acts to conserve water bydiminishing evaporation and, through decay from the summer rains and leaching, serves as fertilizer for the crop.In Fig. 155 the view is along a pathway separating two head ditches between areas in watermelons and taro,carrying the drainage waters from the several furrows into the main ditches. Although the soil appeared wet theplants were vigorous and healthy, seeming in no way to suffer from insufficient drainage.

These people have, therefore, given effective attention to the matter of drainage as well as irrigation and arelooking after possible losses of plant food, as well as ways of supplying it. It is not alone where rice is grown thatcultural methods are made to conserve soluble plant food and to reduce its loss from the field, for very often,where flooding is not practiced, small fields and beds, made quite level, are surrounded by low raised borderswhich permit not only the whole of any rain to be retained upon the field when so desired, but it is completelydistributed over it, thus causing the whole soil to be uniformly charged with moisture and preventing washingfrom one portion of the field to another. Such provisions are shown in Figs. 133 and 138.

Extensive as is the acreage of irrigated rice in China, Korea and Japan, nearly every spear is transplanted; thelargest and best crop possible, rather than the least labor and trouble, as is so often the case with us, determiningtheir methods and practices. We first saw the fitting of the rice nursery beds at Canton and again near Kashing inChekiang province on the farm of Mrs. Wu, whose homestead is seen in Fig. 156. She had come with her husbandfrom Ningpo after the ravages of the Taiping rebellion had swept from two provinces alone twenty millions ofpeople and settled on a small area of then vacated land. As they prospered they added to their holding by purchaseuntil about twenty−five acres were acquired, an area about ten times that possessed by the usual prosperousfamily in China. The widow was managing her place, one of her sons, although married, being still in school, thedaughter−in−law living with her mother−in−law and helping in the home. Her field help during the summerconsisted of seven laborers and she kept four cows for the plowing and pumping of water for irrigation. Thewages of the men were at the rate of $24, Mexican, for five summer months, together with their meals which werefour each day. The cash outlay for the seven men was thus $14.45 of our currency per month. Ten years before,such labor had been $30 per year, as compared with $50 at the time of our visit, or $12.90 and $21.50 of ourcurrency, respectively.

Her usual yields of rice were two piculs per mow, or twenty−six and two−thirds bushels per acre, and a wheatcrop yielding half this amount, or some other, was taken from part of the land the same season, one fertilizationanswering for the two crops. She stated that her annual expense for fertilizers purchased was usually about $60, or$25.80 of our currency. The homestead of Mrs. Wu, Fig. 156, consists of a compound in the form of a largequadrangle surrounding a court closed on the south by a solid wall eight feet high. The structure is of earth brickwith the roof thatched with rice straw.

Our first visit here was April 19th. The nursery rice beds had been planted four days, sowing seed at the rate oftwenty bushels per acre. The soil had been very carefully prepared and highly fertilized, the last treatment being adressing of plant ashes so incompletely burned as to leave the surface coal black. The seed, scattered directlyupon the surface, almost completely covered it and had been gently beaten barely into the dressing of ashes, usinga wide, flat−bottom basket for the purpose. Each evening, if the night was likely to be cool, water was pumpedover the bed, to be withdrawn the next day, if warm and sunny, permitting the warmth to be absorbed by the blacksurface, and a fresh supply of air to be drawn into the soil.

Nearly a month later, May 14th, a second visit was made to this farm and one of the nursery beds of rice, as itthen appeared, is seen in Fig. 159, the plants being about eight inches high and nearing the stage for transplanting.



The field beyond the bed had already been partly flooded and plowed, turning under "Chinese clover" to fermentas green manure, preparatory for the rice transplanting. On the opposite side of the bed and in front of theresidence, Fig. 156, flooding was in progress in the furrows between the ridges formed after the previous crop ofrice was harvested and upon which the crop of clover for green manure was grown. Immediately at one end of thetwo series of nursery beds, one of which is seen in Fig. 159, was the pumping plant seen in Fig. 157, under athatched shelter, with its two pumps installed at the end of a water channel leading from the canal. One of thesewooden pump powers, with the blindfolded cow attached, is reproduced in Fig. 158 and just beyond the animal'shead may be seen the long handle dipper to which reference has been made, used for collecting excreta.

More than a month is saved for maturing and harvesting winter and early spring crops, or in fitting the fields forrice, by this planting in nursery beds. The irrigation period for most of the land is cut short a like amount, savingin both water and time. It is cheaper and easier to highly fertilize and prepare a small area for the nursery, while atthe same time much stronger and more uniform plants are secured than would be possible by sowing in the field.The labor of weeding and caring for the plants in the nursery is far less than would be required in the field. Itwould be practically impossible to fit the entire rice areas as early in the season as the nursery beds are fitted, forthe green manure is not yet grown and time is required for composting or for decaying, if plowed under directly.The rice plants in the nursery are carried to a stage when they are strong feeders and when set into the newlyprepared, fertilized, clean soil of the field they are ready to feed strongly under these most favorable conditionsBoth time and strength of plant are thus gained and these people are following what would appear to be the bestpossible practices under their condition of small holdings and dense population.

With our broad fields, our machinery and few people, their system appears to us crude and impossible, but cut ourholdings to the size of theirs and the same stroke makes our machinery, even our plows, still more impossible, andso the more one studies the environment of these people, thus far unavoidable, their numbers, what they havedone and are doing, against what odds they have succeeded, the more difficult it becomes to see what coursemight have been better.

How full with work is the month which precedes the transplanting of rice has been pointed out,−−the making ofthe compost fertilizer; harvesting the wheat, rape and beans; distributing the compost over the fields, and theirflooding and plowing. In Fig. 160 one of these fields is seen plowed, smoothed and nearly ready for the plants.The turned soil had been thoroughly pulverized, leveled and worked to the consistency of mortar, on the largerfields with one or another sort of harrow, as seen in Figs. 160 and 161. This thorough puddling of the soil permitsthe plants to be quickly set and provides conditions which ensure immediate perfect contact for the roots.

When the fields are ready women repair to the nurseries with their low four−legged bamboo stools, to pull the riceplants, carefully rinsing the soil from the roots, and then tie them into bundles of a size easily handled intransplanting, which are then distributed in the fields.

The work of transplanting may be done by groups of families changing work, a considerable number of themlaboring together after the manner seen in Fig. 163, made from four snap shots taken from the same point atintervals of fifteen minutes. Long cords were stretched in the rice field six feet apart and each of the seven menwas setting six rows of rice one foot apart, six to eight plants in a hill, and the hills eight or nine inches apart inthe row. The, bundle was held in one hand and deftly, with the other, the desired number of plants were selectedwith the fingers at the roots, separated from the rest and, with a single thrust, set in place in the row. There was nopacking of earth about the roots, each hill being set with a single motion, which followed one another in quicksuccession, completing one cross row of six hills after another. The men move backward across the field,completing one entire section, tossing the unused plants into the unset field. Then reset the lines to cover anothersection. We were told that the usual day's work of transplanting, for a man under these conditions, after the field isfitted and the plants are brought to him, is two mow or one−third of an acre. The seven men in this group wouldthus set two and a third acres per day and, at the wage Mrs. Wu was paying, the cash outlay, if the help was hired,would be nearly 21 cents per acre. This is more cheaply than we are able to set cabbage and tobacco plants with



our best machine methods. In Japan, as seen in Figs. 164 and 165, the women participate in the work of setting theplants more than in China.

After the rice has been transplanted its care, unlike that of our wheat crop, does not cease. It must be hoed,fertilized and watered. To facilitate the watering all fields have been leveled, canals, ditches and drains provided,and to aid in fertilizing and hoeing, the setting has been in rows and in hills in the row.

The first working of the rice fields after the transplanting, as we saw it in Japan, consisted in spading between thehills with a four−tined hoe, apparently more for loosening the soil and aeration than for killing weeds. After thistreatment the field was gone over again in the manner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his bare hands tosmooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to eradicate every weed, burying them beneath the mud, and tostraighten each hill of rice as it is passed. Sometimes the fingers are armed with bamboo claws to facilitate theweeding. Machinery in the form of revolving hand cultivators is recently coming into use in Japan, and two menusing these are seen in Fig. 14. In these cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to revolve as thecultivator is pushed along the row.

Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest attention everywhere by these three nations and in no directionmore than in maintaining the store of organic matter in the soil. The pink clover, to which reference has beenmade, Figs. 99 and 100, is extensively sowed after a crop of rice is harvested in the fall and comes into fullbloom, ready to cut for compost or to turn under directly when the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tonsof this green clover are produced per acre, and in Japan this is usually applied to about three acres, the stubble androots serving for the field producing the clover, thus giving a dressing of six to seven tons of green manure peracre, carrying not less than 37 pounds of potassium; 5 pounds of phosphorus, and 58 pounds of nitrogen.

Where the families are large and the holdings small, so they cannot spare room to grow the green manure crop, itis gathered on the mountain, weed and hill lands, or it may be cut in the canals. On our boat trip west fromSoochow the last of May, many boats were passed carrying tons of the long green ribbon−like grass, cut andgathered from the bottom of the canal. To cut this grass men were working to their armpits in the water of thecanal, using a crescent−shaped knife mounted like an anchor from the end of a 16−foot bamboo handle. This wasshoved forward along the bottom of the canal and then drawn backward, cutting the grass, which rose to thesurface where it was gathered upon the boats. Or material for green manure may be cut on grave, mountain or hilllands, as described under Fig. 115.

The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any plant not usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud ofrice fields, as may the chaff which is often scattered upon the water after the rice is transplanted, as in Fig. 168.

Reference has been made to the utilization of waste of various kinds in these countries to maintain the productivepower of their soils, but it is worth while, in the interests of western nations, as helping them to realize theultimate necessity of such economies, to state again, in more explicit terms, what Japan is doing. Dr. Kawaguchi,of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, taking his data from their records, informed me thatJapan produced, in 1908, and applied to her fields, 23,850,295 tons of human manure; 22,812,787 tons ofcompost; and she imported 753,074 tons of commercial fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form oranother. In addition to these she must have applied not less than 1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500 tonsof green manure products grown on her hill and weed lands, and all of these applied to less than 14,000,000 acresof cultivated field, and it should be emphasized that this is done because as yet they have found no better way ofpermanently maintaining a fertility capable of feeding her millions.

Besides fertilizing, transplanting and weeding the rice crop there is the enormous task of irrigation to bemaintained until the rice is nearly matured. Much of the water used is lifted by animal power and a large share ofthis is human. Fig. 169 shows two Chinese men in their cool, capacious, nowhere−touching summer trousersflinging water with the swinging basket, and it is surprising the amount of water which may be raised three to four



feet by this means. The portable spool windlass, in Figs. 27 and 123, has been described, and Fig. 170 shows thequadrangular, cone−shaped bucket and sweep extensively used in Chihli. This man was supplying water sufficientfor the irrigation of half an acre, per day, lifting the water eight feet.

The form of pump most used in China and the foot−power for working it are seen in Fig. 171. Three men workinga similar pump are seen in Fig. 150, a closer view of three men working the foot−power may be seen in Fig. 42and still another stands adjacent to a series of flooded fields in Fig. 172. Where this view was taken the old farmerinformed us that two men, with this pump, lifting water three feet, were able to cover two mow of land with threeinches of water in two hours. This is at the rate of 2.5 acre−inches of water per ten hours per man, and for 12 to 15cents, our currency, thus making sixteen acre−inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 cents, wherecoolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the efficiency of human power applied to the Chinese pump, measured inAmerican currency.

This pump is simply an open box trough in which travels a wooden chain carrying a series of loosely fittingboards which raise the water from the canal, discharging it into the field. The size of the trough and of the bucketsare varied to suit the power applied and the amount of water to be lifted. Crude as it appears there is nothing inwestern manufacture that can compete with it in first cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions andnothing is more characteristic of all these people than their efficient, simple appliances of all kinds, which theyhave reduced to the lowest terms in every feature of construction and cost. The greatest results are accomplishedby the simplest means. If a canal must be bridged and it is too wide to be covered by a single span, the Chineseengineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn the canal under it when completed. This we saw in thecase of a new railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the water had just been turned underit and was being compelled to make its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on the canalhad not been obstructed.

In the foot−power wheel of Japan all gearing is eliminated and the man walks the paddles themselves, as seen inFig. 173. Some of these wheels are ten feet in diameter, depending upon the height the water must be lifted.

Irrigation by animal power is extensively practiced in each of the three countries, employing mostly the type ofpower wheel shown in Fig. 158. The next illustration, Fig. 174, shows the most common type of shelter seen inChekiang and Kiangsu provinces, which are there very numerous. We counted as many as forty such shelters in asemi−circle of half a mile radius. They provide comfort for the animals during both sunshine and rain, for underno conditions must the water be permitted to run low on the rice fields, and everywhere their domestic animalsreceive kind, thoughtful treatment.

In the less level sections, where streams have sufficient fall, current wheels are in common use, carrying bucketsnear their circumference arranged so as to fill when passing through the water, and to empty after reaching thehighest level into a receptacle provided with a conduit which leads the water to the field. In Szechwan provincesome of these current wheels are so large and gracefully constructed as to strongly suggest Ferris wheels. A viewof one of these we are permitted to present in Fig. 175, through the kindness of Rollin T. Chamberlin who tookthe photograph from which the engraving was prepared. This wheel which was some forty feet in diameter, wasworking when the snap shot was taken, raising the water and pouring it into the horizontal trough seen near thetop of the wheel, carried at the summit of a pair of heavy poles standing on the far side of the wheel. From thistrough, leading away to the left above the sky line, is the long pipe, consisting of bamboo stems joined together,for conveying the water to the fields.

When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the large acreage of grain, yielding hundreds of millions ofbushels, the small, widely scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our machine methods quiteimpossible. Even our grain cradle, which preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met with theold−time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill by hill, as it was transplanted.



Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well matured, the water is drawn off and the land permitted todry and harden. The rainy season is not yet over and much care must be exercised in curing the crop. The bundlesmay be shocked in rows along the margins of the paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be suspended, headsdown, from bamboo poles as seen in Fig. 177.

The threshing is accomplished by drawing the heads of the rice through the teeth of a metal comb mounted asseen at the right in Fig. 178, near the lower corner, behind the basket, where a man and woman are occupied inwinnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by means of a large double fan. Fanning mills built on the principleof those used by our farmers and closely resembling them have long been used in both China and Japan. After therice is threshed the grain must be hulled before it can serve as food, and the oldest and simplest method ofpolishing used by the Japanese is seen in, Fig. 179, where the friction of the grain upon itself does the polishing.A quantity of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with heavy blows, the long−headed plunger is driven intothe mass of rice, thus forcing the kernels to slide over one another until, by their abrasion, the desired result issecured. The same method of polishing, on a larger scale, is accomplished where the plungers are worked by theweight of the body, a series of men stepping upon lever handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowingthem to fall under the force of the weight attached. Recently, however, mills worked by gasoline engines are inoperation for both hulling and polishing, in Japan.

The many uses to which rice straw is put in the economies of these people make it almost as important as the riceitself. As food and bedding for cattle and horses; as thatching material for dwellings and other shelters; as fuel; asa mulch; as a source of organic matter in the soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value which is verylarge. Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw is extensively employed in the manufacture of articles used inenormous quantities. It is estimated that not less than 188,700,000 bags such as are seen in Figs. 180 and 181,worth $3,110,000 are made annually from the rice straw in Japan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of cereals and28,190,000 bushels of beans; and besides these, great numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish and otherprepared manures.

In the prefecture of Hyogo, with 596 square miles of farm land, as compared with Rhode Island's 712 squaremiles, Hyogo farmers produced in 1906, on 265,040 acres, 10,584,000 bushels of rice worth $16,191,400,securing an average yield of almost forty bushels per acre and a gross return of $61 for the grain alone. In additionto this, these farmers grew on the same land, the same season, at least one other crop. Where this was barley theaverage yield exceeded twenty−six bushels per acre, worth $17.

In connection with their farm duties these Japanese families manufactured, from a portion of their rice straw, atnight and during the leisure hours of winter, 8,980,000 pieces of matting and netting of different kinds having amarket value of $262,000; 4,838,000 bags worth $185,000; 8,742,000 slippers worth $34,000; 6,254,000 sandalsworth $30,000; and miscellaneous articles worth $64,000. This is a gross earning of more than $21,000,000 fromeleven and a half townships of farm land and the labor of the farmers' families, an average earning of, $80 peracre on nearly three−fourths of the farm land of this prefecture. At this rate three of the four forties of our160−acre farms should bring a gross annual income of $9,600 and the fourth forty should pay the expenses.

At the Nara Experiment Station we were informed that the money value of a good crop of rice in that prefectureshould be placed at ninety dollars per acre for the grain and eight dollars for the unmanufactured straw; thirty−sixdollars per acre for the crop of naked barley and two dollars per acre for the straw. The farmers here practice arotation of rice and barley covering four or five years, followed by a summer crop of melons, worth $320 per acreand some other vegetable instead of the rice on the fifth or sixth year, worth eighty yen per tan, or $160 per acre.To secure green manure for fertilizing, soy beans are planted each year in the space between the rows of barley,the barley being planted in November. One week after the barley is harvested the soy beans, which produce ayield of 160 kan per tan, or 5290 pounds per acre, are turned under and the ground fitted for rice, At these ratesthe Nara farmers are producing on four−fifths or five−sixths of their rice lands a gross earning of $136 per acreannually, and on the other fifth or sixth, an earning of $480 per acre, not counting the annual crop of soy beans



used in maintaining the nitrogen and organic matter in their soils, and not counting their earnings from homemanufactures. Can the farmers of our south Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, which are in the same latitude,sometime attain to this standard? We see no reason why they should not, but only with the best of irrigation,fertilization and proper rotation, with multiple cropping.

XIII. SILK CULTURE

Another of the great and in some ways one of the most remarkable industries of the Orient is that of silkproduction, and its manufacture into the most exquisite and beautiful fabrics in the world. Remarkable for itsmagnitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China, at least 2600 years B. C.; for having beenfounded on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than four thousandyears, expanding until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has been laid down on our western coast at one time andrushed by special fast express to New York City for the Christmas trade.

Japan produced in 1907 26,072,000 pounds of raw silk from 17,154,000 bushels of cocoons, feeding thesilkworms from mulberry leaves grown on 957,560 acres. At the export selling price of this silk in Japan the croprepresents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two dollars per capita for the entire population of theEmpire; and engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in Figs. 184, 185, 186 and 187, there were, in 1906,1,407,766 families or some 7,000,000 people.

Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the total export of raw silk to all countries, from China, in1905, at 30,413,200 pounds, and this, at the Japanese export price, represents a value of $145,000,000. Richardalso states that the value of the annual Chinese export of silk to France amounts to 10,000,000 pounds sterling andthat this is but twelve per cent of the total, from which it appears that her total export alone reaches a value near$400,000,000.

The use of silk in wearing apparel is more general among the Chinese than among the Japanese, and with China'seightfold greater population, the home consumption of silk must be large indeed and her annual production mustmuch exceed that of Japan. Hosie places the output of raw silk in Szechwan at 5,439,500 pounds, which is nearlya quarter of the total output of Japan, and silk is extensively grown in eight other provinces, which together havean area nearly fivefold that of Japan. It would appear, therefore, that a low estimate of China's annual productionof raw silk must be some 120,000,000 pounds, and this, with the output of Japan and Korea, would make aproduct for the three countries probably exceeding 150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value ofperhaps $700,000,000; quite equalling in value the wheat crop of the United States, but produced on less thanone−eighth of the area.

According to the observations of Count Dandola, the worms which contribute to this vast earning are so small thatsome 700,000 of them weigh at hatching only one pound, but they grow very rapidly, shed their skins four times,weighing 15 pounds at the time of the first moult, 94 pounds at the second, 400 pounds at the third, 1628 poundsat the fourth moulting and when mature have come to weigh nearly five tons−−9500 pounds. But in making thisgrowth during about thirty−six days, according to Paton, the 700,000 worms have eaten 105 pounds by the time ofthe first moult; 315 pounds by the second; 1050 pounds by the third; 3150 pounds by the fourth, and in the finalperiod, before spinning, 19,215 pounds, thus consuming in all nearly twelve tons of mulberry leaves in producingnearly five tons of live weight, or at the rate of two and a half pounds of green leaf to one pound of growth.

According to Paton, the cocoons from the 700,000 worms would weigh between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these,according to the observations of Hosie in the province of Szechwan, would yield about one−twelfth their weightof raw silk. On this basis the one pound of worms hatched from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175pounds of raw silk, worth, at the Japanese export price for 1907, between $550 and $832, and 164 pounds ofgreen mulberry leaves would be required to produce a pound of silk.


XIII. SILK CULTURE 82

A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we talked, stated that the young worms which would hatchfrom the eggs spread on a sheet of paper twelve by eighteen inches would consume, in coming to maturity, 2660pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds of silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to onepound of silk. The Japanese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 pounds, produced on 957,560 acres, is a mean yield of27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre of mulberries, and this would require a mean yield of 4465 pounds of greenmulberry leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound of silk.

Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely from three varieties of mulberries, and from them there maybe three pickings of leaves for the rearing of a spring, summer and autumn crop of silk. We learned at the NagoyaExperiment Station, Japan, that there good spring yields of mulberry leaves are at the rate of 400 kan, the secondcrop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan, making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves peracre. This, however, seems to be materially higher than the average for the Empire.

In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberry orchard in Chekiang province, which has been very heavily fertilizedwith canal mud, and which was at the stage for cutting the leaves to feed the first crop of silkworms. A bundle ofcut limbs is in the crotch of the front tree in the view. Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually the feedersof the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25cents per one hundred pounds. The same price was being paid a week later in the vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsuprovince.

The mulberry trees, as they appear before coming into leaf in the early spring, may be seen in Fig. 189. The longlimbs are the shoots of the last year's growth, from which at least one crop of leaves had been picked, and inhealthy orchards they may have a length of two to three feet. An orchard from a portion of which the limbs hadjust been cut, presented the appearance seen in Fig. 190. These trees were twelve to fifteen years old and theenlargements on the ends of the limbs resulted from the frequent pruning, year after year, at nearly the sameplace. The ground under these trees was thickly covered with a growth of pink clover just coming into bloom,which would be spaded into the soil, providing nitrogen and organic matter, whose decay would liberate potash,phosphorus and other mineral plant food elements for the crop.

In Fig. 191 three rows of mulberry trees, planted four feet apart, stand on a narrow embankment raised four feet,partly through adjusting the surrounding fields for rice, and partly by additions of canal mud used as a fertilizer.On either side of the mulberries is a crop of windsor beans, and on the left a crop of rape, both of which would beharvested in early June, the ground where they stand flooded, plowed and transplanted to rice. This and the othermulberry views were taken in the extensively canalized portion of China represented in Fig. 52. The farmerowning this orchard had just finished cutting two large bundles of limbs for the sale of the leaves in the village.He stated that his first crop ordinarily yields from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that the secondcrop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The first and second crop of leaves, if yielding together twenty−threepiculs per mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, worth, at the price named, $59.34. Mulberry leaves must bedelivered fresh as soon as gathered and must be fed the same day, the limbs, when, stripped of their leaves, at theplace where these are sold, are tied into bundles and reserved for use as fuel.

In the south of China the mulberry is grown from low cuttings rooted by layering. We have before spoken of ourfive hours ride in the Canton delta region, on the steamer Nanning, through extensive fields of low mulberry thenin full leaf, which were first mistaken for cotton nearing the blossom stage. This form of mulberry is seen in Fig.43, and the same method of pruning is practiced in southern Japan. In middle Japan high pruning, as in Chekiangand Kiangsu provinces, is followed, but in northern Japan the leaves are picked directly, as is the case with thelast crop of leaves everywhere, pruning not being practiced in the more northern latitudes.

Not all silk produced in these northern countries is from the domesticated Bombyx mori, large amounts beingobtained from the spinnings of wild silkworms feeding upon the leaves of species of oak growing on the mountainand hill lands in various parts of China, Korea and Japan. In China the collections in largest amount are reeled


XIII. SILK CULTURE 83

from the cocoons of the tussur worm (Antheraea pernyi) gathered in Shantung, Honan, Kweichow and Szechwanprovinces. In the hilly parts of Manchuria also this industry is attaining large proportions, the cocoons being sentto Chefoo in the Shantung province, to be woven into pongee silk.

M. Randot has estimated the annual crop of wild silk cocoons in Szechwan at 10,180,000 pounds, although in theopinion of Alexander Hosie much of this may come from Kweichow. Richard places the export of raw wild silkfrom the whole of China proper, in 1904, at 4,400,000 pounds. This would mean not less than 75,300,000 poundsof wild cocoons and may be less than half the home consumption.

From data collected by Alexander Hosie it appears that in 1899 the export of raw tussur silk from Manchuria,through the port of Newchwang by steamer alone, was 1,862,448 pounds, valued at $1,721,200, and theproduction is increasing rapidly. The export from the same port the previous year, by steamer, was 1,046,704pounds. This all comes from the hilly and mountain lands south of Mukden, lying between the Liao plain on thewest and the Yalu river on the east, covering some five thousand square miles, which we crossed on theAntung−Mukden railway.

There are two broods of these wild silkworms each season, between early May and early October. Cocoons of thefall brood are kept through the winter and when the moths come forth they are caused to lay their eggs on piecesof cloth and when the worms are hatched they are fed until the first moult upon the succulent new oak leavesgathered from the hills, after which the worms are taken to the low oak growth on the hills where they feedthemselves and spin their cocoons under the cover of leaves drawn about them.

The moths reserved from the first brood, after becoming fertile, are tied by means of threads to the oak busheswhere they deposit the eggs which produce the second crop of tussur silk. To maintain an abundance of succulentleaves within reach the oaks are periodically cut back.

Thus these plain people, patient, frugal, unshrinking from toil, the basic units of three of the oldest nations, go tothe uncultivated hill lands and from the wild oak and the millions of insects which they help to feed upon it, notonly create a valuable export trade but procure material for clothing, fuel, fertilizer and food, for the largechrysalides, cooked in the reeling of the silk, may be eaten at once or are seasoned with sauce to be used later.Besides this, the last unreelable portion of each cocoon is laid aside to be manufactured into silk wadding and intosoft mattresses for caskets upon which the wealthy lay their dead.

XIV. THE TEA INDUSTRY

The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great industries of these nations, taking rank with thatof sericulture, if not above it, in the important part it plays in the welfare of the people. There is little reason todoubt that the industry has its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable for drinkingpurposes. The drinking of boiled water has been universally adopted in these countries as an individuallyavailable, thoroughly efficient and safe guard against that class of deadly disease germs which it has been almostimpossible to exclude from the drinking water of any densely peopled country.

So far as may be judged from the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus far instituted, and takinginto consideration the inherent difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing populations, itappears inevitable that modern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety must besecured in some manner having the equivalent effect of boiling water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races,and which destroys active disease germs at the latest moment before using. And it must not be overlooked that theboiling of drinking water in China and Japan has been demanded quite as much because of congested ruralpopulations as to guard against such dangers in large cities, while as yet our sanitary engineers have dealt onlywith the urban phases of this most vital problem and chiefly, too, thus far, only where it has been possible to


XIV. THE TEA INDUSTRY 84

procure the water supply in comparatively unpopulated hill lands. But such opportunities cannot remain availableindefinitely, any more than they did in China and Japan, and already typhoid epidemics break out in our largecities and citizens are advised to boil their drinking water.

If tea drinking in the family is to remain general in most portions of the world, and especially if it shall increase inproportion to population, there is great industrial and commercial promise for China, Korea and Japan in their teaindustry if they will develop tea culture still further over the extensive and still unused flanks of the hill lands;improve their cultural methods; their manufacture; and develop their export trade. They have the best of climaticand soil conditions and people sufficiently capable of enormously expanding the industry. Both improvement andexpansion of methods along all essential lines, are needed, enabling them to put upon the market pure teas ofthoroughly uniform grades of guaranteed quality, and with these the maintenance of an international code of rigidethics which shall secure to all concerned a square deal and a fair division of the profits.

The production of rice, silk and tea are three industries which these nations are preeminently circumstanced andqualified to economically develop and maintain. Other nations may better specialize along other lines whichfitness determines, and the time is coming when maximum production at minimum cost as the result of cleanrobust living that in every way is worth while, will determine lines of social progress and of internationalrelations. With the vital awakening to the possibility of and necessity for world peace, it must be recognized thatthis can be nothing less than universal, industrial, commercial, intellectual and religious, in addition to makingimpossible forever the bloody carnage that has ravaged the world through all the centuries.

With the extension of rapid transportation and more rapid communication throughout the world, we are fastentering the state of social development which will treat the whole world as a mutually helpful, harmoniousindustrial unit. It must be recognized that in certain regions, because of peculiar fitness of soil, climate andpeople, needful products can be produced there better and enough more cheaply than elsewhere to pay the cost oftransportation. If China, Korea and Japan, with parts of India, can and will produce the best and cheapest silks,teas or rice, it must be for the greatest good to seek a mutually helpful exchange, and the erection of impassabletariff barriers is a declaration of war and cannot make for world peace and world progress.

The date of the introduction of tea culture into China appears unknown. It was before the beginning of theChristian era and tradition would place it more than 2700 years earlier. The Japanese definitely date itsintroduction into their islands as in the year 805 A. D., and state its coming to them from China. However andwhenever tea growing originated in these countries, it long ago attained and now maintains large proportions. In1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land occupied by tea gardens and tea plantations. These produced 60,877,975pounds of cured tea, giving a mean yield of 489 pounds per acre. Of the more than sixty million pounds of teaproduced annually on nearly two hundred square miles in Japan, less than twenty−two million pounds areconsumed at home, the balance being exported at a cash value, in 1907, of $6,309,122, or a mean of sixteen centsper pound.

In China the volume of tea produced annually is much larger than in Japan. Hosie places the annual export fromSzechwan into Tibet alone at 40,000,000 pounds and this is produced largely in the mountainous portion of theprovince west of the Min river. Richard places her direct export to foreign countries, in 1905, at 176,027,255pounds; and in 1906 at 180,271,000 pounds, so that the annual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds, and hertotal product of cured tea must be more than 400,000,000.

The general appearance of tea bushes as they are grown in Japan is indicated in Fig. 192. The form of the bushes,the shape and size of the leaves and the dense green, shiny foliage quite suggests our box, so much used inborders and hedges. When the bushes are young, not covering the ground, other crops are grown between therows, but as the bushes attain their full size, standing after trimming, waist to breast high, the ground between isusually thickly covered with straw, leaves or grass and weeds from the hill lands, which serve as a mulch, as afertilizer, as a means of preventing washing on the hillsides, and to force the rain to enter the soil uniformly where


XIV. THE TEA INDUSTRY 85

it falls.

Quite a large per cent of the tea bushes are grown on small, scattering, irregular areas about dwellings, on land notreadily tilled, but there are also many tea plantations of considerable size, presenting the appearance seen in Fig.193. After each picking of the leaves the bushes are trimmed back with pruning shears, giving the rows theappearance of carefully trimmed hedges.

The tea leaves are hand picked, generally by women and girls, after the manner seen in Fig. 194, where they aregathering the tender, newly−formed leaves into baskets to be weighed fresh, as seen in Fig. 195.

Three crops of leaves are usually gathered each season, the first yielding in Japan one hundred kan per tan, thesecond fifty kan and the third eighty kan per tan. This is at the rate of 3307 pounds, 1653 pounds, and 2645pounds per acre, making a total of 7605 pounds for the season, from which the grower realizes from a little morethan 2.2 to a little more than 3 cents per pound of the green leaves, or a gross earning of $167 to $209.50 per acre.

We were informed that the usual cost for fertilizers for the tea orchards was 15 to 20 yen per tan, or $30 to $40per acre per annum, the fertilizer being applied in the fall, in the early spring and again after the first picking ofthe leaves. While the tea plants are yet small one winter crop and one summer crop of vegetables, beans or barleyare grown between the rows, these giving a return of some forty dollars per acre. Where the plantations are givengood care and ample fertilization the life of a plantation may be prolonged continuously, it is said, through onehundred or more years.

During our walk from Joji to Kowata, along a country road in one of the tea districts, we passed a tea−curinghouse. This was a long rectangular, one−story building with twenty furnaces arranged, each under an openwindow, around the sides. In front of each heated furnace with its tray of leaves, a Japanese man, wearing only abreech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was busy rolling the tea leaves between the palms of his hands.

At another place we witnessed the making of the low grade dust tea, which is prepared from the leaves of busheswhich must be removed or from those of the prunings. In this case the dried bushes with their leaves were beingbeaten with flails on a threshing floor. The dust tea thus produced is consumed by the poorer people.

XV. ABOUT TIENTSIN

On the 6th of June we left central China for Tientsin and further north, sailing by coastwise steamer fromShanghai, again plowing through the turbid waters which give literal exactness to the name Yellow Sea. Oursteamer touched at Tsingtao, taking on board a body of German troops, and again at Chefoo, and it was onlybetween these two points that the sea was not strongly turbid. Nor was this all. From early morning of the 10thuntil we anchored at Tientsin, 2:30 P. M., our course up the winding Pei ho was against a strong dust−laden windwhich left those who had kept to the deck as grey as though they had ridden by automobile through the Coloradodesert; so the soils of high interior Asia are still spreading eastward by flood and by wind into the valleys and farover the coastal plains. Over large areas between Tientsin and Peking and at other points northward towardMukden trees and shrubs have been systematically planted in rectangular hedgerow lines, to check the force of thewinds and reduce the drifting of soils, planted fields occupying the spaces between.

It was on this trip that we met Dr. Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. His wife is a physician practicingamong the Chinese women, and in discussing the probable rate of increase of population among the Chinese, itwas stated that she had learned through her practice that very many mothers had borne seven to eleven childrenand yet but one, two or at most three, were living.

It was said there are many customs and practices which determine this high mortality among children, one of


XV. ABOUT TIENTSIN 86

which is that of feeding them meat before they have teeth, the mother masticating for the children, with the resultthat often fatal convulsions follow. A Scotch physician of long experience in Shantung, who took the steamer atTsingtao, replied to my question as to the usual size of families in his circuit, "I do not know. It depends on thecrops. In good years the number is large; in times of famine the girls especially are disposed of, often permitted todie when very young for lack of care. Many are sold at such times to go into other provinces." Such statements,however, should doubtless be taken with much allowance. If all the details were known regarding the cases whichhave served as foundations for such reports, the matter might appear in quite a different light from that suggestedby such cold recitals.

Although land taxes are high in China Dr. Evans informed me that it is not infrequent for the same tax to be leviedtwice and even three times in one year. Inquiries regarding the land taxes among farmers in different parts ofChina showed rates running from three cents to a dollar and a half, Mexican, per mow; or from about eight centsto $3.87 gold, per acre. At these rates a forty acre farm would pay from $3.20 to $154.80, and a quarter sectionfour times these amounts. Data collected by Consul−General E. T. Williams of Tientsin indicate that in Shantungthe land tax is about one dollar per acre, and in Chihli, twenty cents. In Kiangsi province the rate is 200 to 300cash per mow, and in Kiangsu, from 500 to 600 cash per mow, or, according to the rate of exchange given onpage 76, from 60 to 80 cents, or 90 cents to $1.20 per acre in Kiangsi; and $1.50 to $2.00 or $1.80 to $2.40 inKiangsu province. The lowest of these rates would make the land tax on 160 acres, $96, and the highest wouldplace it at $384, gold.

In Japan the taxes are paid quarterly and the combined amount of the national, prefectural and village assessmentsusually aggregates about ten per cent of the government valuation placed on the land. The mean valuation placedon the irrigated fields, excluding Formosa and Karafuto, was in 1907, 35.35 yen per tan; that of the upland fields,9.40 yen, and the genya and pasture lands were given a valuation of .22 yen per tan. These are valuations of$70.70, $18.80 and $.44, gold, per acre, respectively, and the taxes on forty acres of paddy field would be$282.80; $75.20 on forty acres of upland field, and $1.76, gold, on the same area of the genya and weed lands.

In the villages, where work of one or another kind is done for pay, Dr. Evans stated that a woman's wage mightnot exceed $8, Mexican, or $3.44, gold, per year, and when we asked how it could be worth a woman's while towork a whole year for so small a sum, his reply was, "If she did not do this she would earn nothing, and thiswould keep her in clothes and a little more." A cotton spinner in his church would procure a pound of cotton andon returning the yarn would receive one and a quarter pounds of cotton in exchange, the quarter pound being hercompensation.

Dr. Evans also described a method of rooting slips from trees, practiced in various parts of China. The under sideof a branch is cut, bent upward and split for a short distance; about this is packed a ball of moistened earthwrapped in straw to retain the soil and to provide for future watering; the whole may then be bound with strips ofbamboo for greater stability. In this way slips for new mulberry orchards are procured.

At eight o'clock in the morning we entered the mouth of the Pei ho and wound westward through a vast, nearlysea−level, desert plain and in both directions, far toward the horizon, huge white stacks of salt dotted the surfaceof the Taku Government salt fields, and revolving in the wind were great numbers of horizontal sail windmills,pumping sea water into an enormous acreage of evaporation basins. In Fig. 196 may be seen five of the large saltstacks and six of the windmills, together with many smaller piles of salt. Fig. 197 is a closer view of theevaporation basins with piles of salt scraped from the surface after the mother liquor had been drained away. Thewindmills, which were working one, sometimes two, of the large wooden chain pumps, were some thirty feet indiameter and lifted the brine from tide−water basins into those of a second and third higher level where the secondand final concentration occurred. These windmills, crude as they appear in Fig. 198, are nevertheless efficient,cheaply constructed and easily controlled. The eight sails, each six by ten feet, were so hung as to take the windthrough the entire revolution, tilting automatically to receive the wind on the opposite face the moment the edgepassed the critical point. Some 480 feet of sail surface were thus spread to the wind, working on a radius of fifteen



feet. The horizontal drive wheel had a diameter of ten feet, carried eighty−eight wooden cogs which engaged apinion with fifteen leaves, and there were nine arms on the reel at the other end of the shaft which drove the chain.The boards or buckets of the chain pump were six by twelve inches, placed nine inches apart, and with a fairbreeze the pump ran full.

Enormous quantities of salt are thus cheaply manufactured through wind, tide and sun power directed by thecheapest human labor. Before reaching Tientsin we passed the Government storage yards and counted twohundred stacks of salt piled in the open, and more than a third of the yard had been passed before beginning thecount. The average content of each stack must have exceeded 3000 cubic feet of salt, and more than 40,000,000pounds must have been stored in the yards. Armed guards in military uniform patrolled the alleyways day andnight. Long strips of matting laid over the stacks were the only shelter against rain.

Throughout the length of China's seacoast, from as far north as beyond Shanhaikwan, south to Canton, salt ismanufactured from sea water in suitable places. In Szechwan province, we learn from the report ofConsul−General Hosie, that not less than 300,000 tons of salt are annually manufactured there, largely from brineraised by animal power from wells seven hundred to more than two thousand feet deep.

Hosie describes the operations at a well more than two thousand feet deep, at Tzeliutsing. In the basement of apower−house which sheltered forty water buffaloes, a huge bamboo drum twelve feet high, sixty feet incircumference, was so set as to revolve on a vertical axis propelled by four cattle drawing from its circumference.A hemp rope was wound about this drum, six feet from the ground, passing out and under a pulley at the well,then up and around a wheel mounted sixty feet above and descended to the bucket made from bamboo stems fourinches in diameter and nearly sixty feet long, which dropped with great speed to the bottom of the well as the ropeunwound. When the bucket reached the bottom four attendants, each with a buffalo in readiness, hitched to thedrum and drove at a running pace, during fifteen minutes, or until the bucket was raised from the well. Thebuffalo were then unhitched and, while the bucket was being emptied and again dropped to the bottom of the well,a fresh relay were brought to the drum. In this way the work continued night and day.

The brine, after being raised from the well, was emptied into distributing reservoirs, flowing thence throughbamboo pipes to the evaporating sheds where round bottomed, shallow iron kettles four feet across were set inbrick arches in which jets of natural gas were burning.

Within an area some sixty miles square there are more than a thousand brine and twenty fire wells from whichfuel gas is taken. The mouths of the fire wells are closed with masonry, out from which bamboo conduits coatedwith lime lead to the various furnaces, terminating with iron burners beneath the kettles. Remarkable is the factthat in the city of Tzeliutsing, both these brine and the fire wells have been operated in the manufacture of saltsince before Christ was born.

The forty water buffalo are worth $30 to $40 per head and their food fifteen to twenty cents per day. The cost ofmanufacturing this salt is placed at thirteen to fourteen cash per catty, to which the Government adds a tax of ninecash more, making the cost at the factory from 82 cents to $1.15, gold, per hundred pounds. Salt manufacture is aGovernment monopoly and the product must be sold either to Government officials or to merchants who havebought the exclusive right to supply certain districts. The importation of salt is prohibited by treaties. For the salttax collection China is divided into eleven circuits each having its own source of supply and transfer of salt fromone circuit to another is forbidden.

The usual cost of salt is said to vary between one and a half and four cash per catty. The retail price of salt rangesfrom three−fourths to three cents per pound, fully twelve to fifteen times the cost of manufacture. The annualproduction of salt in the Empire is some 1,860,000 tons, and in 1901 salt paid a tax close to ten million dollars.



Beyond the salt fields, toward Tientsin, the banks of the river were dotted at short intervals with groups of low,almost windowless houses, Fig. 199, built of earth brick plastered with clay on sides and roof, made moreresistant to rain by an admixture of chaff and cut straw, and there was a remarkable freshness of look about themwhich we learned was the result of recent preparations made for the rainy season about to open. Beyond the firstof these villages came a stretch of plain dotted thickly and far with innumerable grave mounds, to which referencehas been made. For nearly an hour we had traveled up the river before there was any material vegetation, the soilbeing too saline apparently to permit growth, but beyond this, crops in the fields and gardens, with some fruit andother trees, formed a fringe of varying width along the banks. Small fields of transplanted rice on both banks werefrequent and often the land was laid out in beds of two levels, carefully graded, the rice occupying the lowerareas, and wooden chain pumps were being worked by hand, foot and animal power, irrigating both rice andgarden crops.

In the villages were many stacks of earth compost, of the Shantung type; manure middens were common anddonkeys drawing heavy stone rollers followed by men with large wooden mallets, were going round and round,pulverizing and mixing the dry earth compost and the large earthen brick from dismantled kangs, preparingfertilizer for the new series of crops about to be planted, following the harvest of wheat and barley. Largeboatloads of these prepared fertilizers were moving on the river and up the canals to the fields.

Toward the coast from Tientsin, especially in the country, traversed by the railroad, there was little producedexcept a short grass, this being grazed at the time of our visit and, in places, cut for a very meagre crop of hay.The productive cultivated lands lie chiefly along the rivers and canals or other water courses, where there is betterdrainage as well as water for irrigation. The extensive, close canalization that characterizes parts of Kiangsu andChekiang provinces is lacking here and for this reason, in part, the soil is not so productive. The fullercanalization, the securing of adequate drainage and the gaining of complete control of the flood waters whichflow through this vast plain during the rainy season constitute one of China's most important industrial problemswhich, when properly solved, must vastly increase her resources. During our drive over the old Peking−Taku roadsaline deposits were frequently observed which had been brought to the surface during the dry season, and the cityengineer of Tientsin stated that in their efforts at parking portions of the foreign concessions they had found thetrees dying after a few years when their roots began to penetrate the more saline subsoil, but that since they hadopened canals, improving the drainage, trees were no longer dying. There is little doubt that proper drainage bymeans of canals, and the irrigation which would go with it, would make all of these lands, now more or lesssaline, highly productive, as are now those contiguous to the existing water courses.

It had rained two days before our drive over the Taku road and when we applied for a conveyance, the proprietordoubted whether the roads were passible, as he had been compelled to send out an extra team to assist in thereturn of one which had been stalled during the previous night. It was finally arranged to send an extra horse withus. The rainy season had just begun but the deep trenching of the roads concentrates the water in them and greatlyintensifies the trouble. In one of the little hamlets through which we passed the roadway was trenched to a depthof three to four feet in the middle of the narrow street, leaving only five feet for passing in front of the dwellingson either side, and in this trench our carriage moved through mud and water nearly to the hubs.

Between Tientsin and Peking, in the early morning after a rain of the night before, we saw many farmers workingtheir fields with the broad hoes, developing an earth mulch at the first possible moment to conserve their muchneeded moisture. Men were at work, as seen in Figs. 200 and 201, using long handled hoes, with blades nine bythirteen inches, hung so as to draw just under the surface, doing very effective work, permitting them to cover theground rapidly.

Walking further, we came upon six women in a field of wheat, gleaning the single heads which had prematurelyripened and broken over upon the ground between the rows soon to be harvested. Whether they were doing this asa privilege or as a task we do not know; they were strong, cheerful, reasonably dressed, hardly past middle lifeand it was nearly noon, yet not one of them had collected more straws than she could readily grasp in one hand.



The season in Chihli as in Shantung, had been one of unusual drought, making the crop short and perhaps unusualfrugality was being practiced; but it is in saving that these people excel perhaps more than in producing. Theseheads of wheat, if left upon the ground, would be wasted and if the women were privileged gleaners in the fieldstheir returns were certainly much greater than were those of the very old women we have seen in France gatheringheads of wheat from the already harvested fields.

In the fields between Tientsin and Peking all wheat was being pulled, the earth shaken from the roots, tied insmall bundles and taken to the dwellings, sometimes on the heavy cart drawn by a team consisting of a smalldonkey and cow hitched tandem, as seen in Fig. 202. Millet had been planted between the rows of wheat in thisfield and was already up. When the wheat was removed the ground would be fertilized and planted to soy beans.Because of the dry season this farmer estimated his yield would be but eight to nine bushels per acre. He wasexpecting to harvest thirteen to fourteen bushels of millet and from ten to twelve bushels of soy beans per acrefrom the same field. This would give him an earning, based on the local prices, of $10.36, gold, for the wheat;$6.00 for the beans, and $5.48 per acre for the millet. This land was owned by the family of the Emperor and wasrented at $1.55, gold, per acre. The soil was a rather light sandy loam, not inherently fertile, and fertilizers to thevalue of $3.61 gold, per acre, had been applied, leaving the earning $16.71 per acre.

Another farmer with whom we talked, pulling his crop of wheat, would follow this with millet and soy beans inalternate rows. His yield of wheat was expected to be eleven to twelve bushels per acre, his beans twenty−onebushels and his millet twenty−five bushels which, at the local prices for grain and straw, would bring a grossearning of $35, gold, per acre.

Before reaching the end of our walk through the fields toward the next station we came across another of themany instances of the labor these people are willing to perform for only a small possible increase in crop. Thefield was adjacent to one of the windbreak hedges and the trees had spread their roots far afield and werethreatening his crop through the consumption of moisture and plant food. To check this depletion the farmer haddug a trench twenty inches deep the length of his field, and some twenty feet from the line of trees, therebycutting all of the surface roots to stop their draft on the soil. The trench was left open and an interesting featureobserved was that nearly every cut root on the field side of the trench had thrown up one or more shoots bearingleaves, while the ends still connected with the trees showed no signs of leaf growth.

In Chihli as elsewhere the Chinese are skilled gardeners, using water for irrigation whenever it is advantageous.One gardener was growing a crop of early cabbage, followed by one of melons, and these with radish the sameseason. He was paying a rent of $6.45, gold, per acre; was applying fertilizer at a cost of nearly $8 per acre foreach of the three crops, making his cash outlay $29.67 per acre. His crop of cabbage sold for $103, gold; hismelons for $77, and his radish for something more than $51, making a total of $232.20 per acre, leaving him a netvalue of $202.53.

A second gardener, growing potatoes, obtained a yield, when sold new, of 8,000 pounds per acre; and of 16,000pounds when the crop was permitted to mature. The new potatoes were sold so as to bring $51.60 and the maturepotatoes $185.76 per acre, making the earning for the two crops the same season a total of $237.36, gold. Byplanting the first crop very early these gardeners secure two crops the same season, as far north as Columbus,Ohio, and Springfield, Illinois, the first crop being harvested when the tubers are about the size of walnuts. Therental and fertilizers in this case amounted to $30.96 per acre.

Still another gardener growing winter wheat followed by onions, and these by cabbage, both transplanted, realizedfrom the three crops a gross earning of $176.73, gold, per acre, and incurred an expense of $31.73 per acre forfertilizer and rent, leaving him a net earning of $145 per acre.

These old people have acquired the skill and practice of storing and preserving such perishable fruits as pears andgrapes so as to enable them to keep them on the markets almost continuously. Pears were very common in the



latter part of June, and Consul−General Williams informed me that grapes are regularly carried into July. Intalking with my interpreter as to the methods employed I could only learn that the growers depend simply upondry earth cellars which can be maintained at a very uniform temperature, the separate fruits being wrapped inpaper. No foreigner with whom we talked knew their methods.

Vegetables are carried through the winter in such earth cellars as are seen in Fig. 88, page 161, these beingcovered after they are filled.

As to the price of labor in this part of China, we learned through Consul−General Williams that a mastermechanic may receive 50 cents, Mexican, per day, and a journeyman 18 cents, or at a rate of 21.5 cents and 7.75cents, gold. Farm laborers receive from $20 to $30, Mexican, or $8.60 to $12.90, gold, per year, with food, fueland presents which make a total of $17.20 to $21.50. This is less for the year than we pay for a month of probablyless efficient labor. There is relatively little child labor in China and this perhaps should be expected when adultlabor is so abundant and so cheap.

XVI. MANCHURIA AND KOREA

The 39th parallel of latitude lies just south of Tientsin; followed westward, it crosses the toe of Italy's boot, leadspast Lisbon in Portugal, near Washington and St. Louis and to the north of Sacramento on the Pacific. We wereleaving a country with a mean July temperature of 80 deg F., and of 21 deg in January, but where two feet of icemay form; a country where the eighteen year mean maximum temperature is 103.5 deg and the mean minimum4.5 deg; where twice in this period the thermometer recorded 113 deg above zero, and twice 7 deg below, and yetnear the coast and in the latitude of Washington; a country where the mean annual rainfall is 19.72 inches and allbut 3.37 inches falls in June, July, August and September. We had taken the 5:40 A. M. Imperial North−Chinatrain, June 17th, to go as far northward as Chicago,−−to Mukden in Manchuria, a distance by rail of some fourhundred miles, but all of the way still across the northward extension of the great Chinese coastal plain.Southward, out from the coldest quarter of the globe, where the mean January temperature is more than 40 degbelow zero, sweep northerly winds which bring to Mukden a mean January temperature only 3 deg above zero,and yet there the July temperature averages as high as 77 deg and there is a mean annual rainfall of but 18.5inches, coming mostly in the summer, as at Tientsin.

Although the rainfall of the northern extension of China's coastal plain is small, its efficiency is relatively highbecause of its most favorable distribution and the high summer temperatures. In the period of early growth, April,May and June, there are 4.18 inches; but in the period of maximum growth, July and August, the rainfall is 11.4inches; and in the ripening period, September and October, it is 3.08 inches, while during the rest of the year but1.06 inch falls. Thus most of the rain comes at the time when the crops require the greatest daily consumption andit is least in mid−winter, during the period of little growth.

As our train left Tientsin we traveled for a long distance through a country agriculturally poor and little tilled,with surface flat, the soil apparently saline, and the land greatly in need of drainage. Wherever there were canalsthe crops were best, apparently occupying more or less continuous areas along either bank. The day was hot andsultry but laborers were busy with their large hoes, often with all garments laid aside except a short shirt or a pairof roomy trousers.

In the salt district about the village of Tangku there were huge stacks of salt and smaller piles not yet broughttogether, with numerous windmills, constituting most striking features in the landscape, but there was almost noagricultural or other vegetation. Beyond Pehtang there are other salt works and a canal leads westward to Tientsin,on which the salt is probably taken thither, and still other salt stacks and windmills continued visible until nearHanku, where another canal leads toward Peking. Here the coast recedes eastward from the railway and beyondthe city limits many grave mounds dot the surrounding plains where herds of sheep were grazing.


XVI. MANCHURIA AND KOREA 91

As we hurried toward the delta region of the Lwan ho, and before reaching Tangshan, a more productive countrywas traversed. Thrifty trees made the landscape green, and fields of millet, kaoliang and wheat stretched for milestogether along the track and back over the flat plain beyond the limit of vision. Then came fields planted with tworows of maize alternating with one row of soy beans, but not over twenty−eight inches apart, one stalk of corn in aplace every sixteen to eighteen inches, all carefully hoed, weedless and blanketed with an excellent earth mulch;but still the leaves were curling in the intense heat of the sun. Tangshan is a large city, apparently of recent growthon the railroad in a country where isolated conical hills rise one hundred or two hundred feet out of the flat,plains. Cart loads of finely pulverized earth compost were here moving to the fields in large numbers, being laidin single piles of five hundred to eight hundred pounds, forty to sixty feet apart. At Kaiping the country grows alittle rolling and we passed through the first railway cuts, six to eight feet deep, and the water in the streams isrunning ten to twelve feet below the surface of the fields. On the right and beyond Kuyeh there are low hills, andhere we passed enormous quantities of dry, finely powdered earth compost, distributed on narrow unplanted areaover the fields. What crop, if indeed any, had occupied these areas this season, we could not judge. Thefertilization here is even more extensive and more general than we found it in the Shantung province, and inplaces water was being carried in pails to the fields for use either in planting or in transplanting, to ensure thereadiness of the new crops to utilize the first rainfall when it comes.

Then the bed of a nearly dry stream some three hundred feet wide was crossed and beyond it a sandy plain wasplanted in long narrow fields between windbreak hedges. The crops were small but evidently improved by theinfluence of the shelter. The sand in places had drifted into the hedges to a height of three feet. At a number ofother places along the way before Mukden was reached such protected areas were passed and oftenest on thenorth side of wide, now nearly dry, stream channels.

As we passed on toward Shanhaikwan we were carried over broad plains even more nearly level and unobstructedthan any to be found in the corn belt of the middle west, and these too planted with corn, kaoliang, wheat andbeans, and with the low houses hidden in distant scattered clusters of trees dotting the wide plain on either side,with not a fence, and nothing to suggest a road anywhere in sight. We seemed to be moving through one vast fielddotted with hundreds of busy men, a plowman here, and there a great cart hopelessly lost in the field so far as onecould see any sign of road to guide their course.

Some early crop appeared to have been harvested from areas alternating with those on the ground, and these weredotted with piles of the soil and manure compost, aggregating hundreds of tons, distributed over the fields but nodoubt during the next three or four days these thousands of piles would have been worked into the soil andvanished from sight, to reappear after another crop and another year.

It was at Lwanchow that we met the out−going tide of soy beans destined for Japan and Europe, pouring in fromthe surrounding country in gunny sacks brought on heavy carts drawn by large mules, as seen in Fig. 203, andenormous quantities had been stacked in the open along the tracks, with no shelter whatever, awaiting the arrivalof trains to move them to export harbors.

The planting here, as elsewhere, is in rows, but not of one kind of grain. Most frequently two rows of maize,kaoliang or millet alternated with the soy beans and usually not more than twenty−eight inches apart, sharp highridge cultivation being the general practice. Such planting secures the requisite sunshine with a larger number ofplants on the field; it secures a continuous general distribution of the roots of the nitrogen−fixing soy beans in thesoil of all the field every season, and permits the soil to be more continuously and more completely laid undertribute by the root systems. In places where the stand of corn or millet was too open the gaps were filled with thesoy beans. Such a system of planting possibly permits a more immediate utilization of the nitrogen gathered fromthe soil air in the root nodules, as these die and undergo nitrification during the same season, while the crops areyet on the ground, and so far as phosphorus and potassium compounds are liberated by this decay, they too wouldbecome available to the crops.



The end of the day's journey was at Shanhaikwan on the boundary between Chihli and Manchuria, the trainstopping at 6:20 P. M. for the night. Stepping upon the veranda from our room on the second floor of a Japaneseinn in the early morning, there stood before us, sullen and grey, the eastern terminus of the Great Wall, windingfifteen hundred miles westward across twenty degrees of longitude, having endured through twenty−onecenturies, the most stupendous piece of construction ever conceived by man and executed by a nation. More thantwenty feet thick at the base and than twelve feet on the top; rising fifteen to thirty feet above the ground withparapets along both faces and towers every two hundred yards rising twenty feet higher, it must have been, for itstime and the methods of warfare then practiced, when defended by their thousands, the boldest and most efficientnational defense ever constructed. Nor in the economy of construction and maintenance has it ever been equalled.

Even if it be true that 20,000 masons toiled through ten years in its building, defended by 400,000 soldiers, fed bya commissariat of 20,000 more and supported by 30,000 others in the transport, quarry and potters' service, shewould then have been using less than eight tenths per cent of her population, on a basis of 60,000,000 at the time;while according to Edmond Théry's estimate, the officers and soldiers of Europe today, in time of peace,constitute one per cent of a population of 400,000,000 of people, and these, at only one dollar each per day forfood, clothing and loss of producing power would cost her nations, in ten years, more than $14,000 million.China, with her present habits and customs, would more easily have maintained her army of 470,000 men onthirty cents each per day, or for a total ten−year cost of but $520,000,000. The French cabinet in 1900 approved anaval program involving an expenditure of $600,000,000 during the next ten years, a tax of more than $15 forevery man, woman and child in the Republic.

Leaving Shanhaikwan at 5:20 in the morning and reaching Mukden at 6:30 in the evening, we rode the entire daythrough Manchurian fields. Manchuria has an area of 363,700 square miles, equal to that of both Dakotas,Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa combined. It has roughly the outline of a huge boot and could one slide it eastwarduntil Port Arthur was at Washington, Shanhaikwan would fall well toward Pittsburgh, both at the tip of the broadtoe to the boot. The foot would lie across Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and all of New England,extending beyond New Brunswick with the heel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Harbin, at the instep of the boot,would lie fifty miles east of Montreal and the expanding leg would reach northwestward nearly to James Bay,entirely to the north of the Ottawa river and the Canadian Pacific, spanning a thousand miles of latitude and ninehundred miles of longitude.

The Liao plain, thirty miles wide, and the central Sungari plain, are the largest in Manchuria, forming together along narrow valley floor between two parallel mountain systems and extending northeasterly from the Liao gulf,between Port Arthur and Shanhaikwan, up the Liao river and down the Sungari to the Amur, a distance of eighthundred or more miles. These plains have a fertile, deep soil and it is on them and other lesser river bottoms thatManchurian agriculture is developed, supporting eight or nine million people on a cultivated, acreage possibly notgreater than 25,000 square miles.

Manchuria has great forest and grazing possibilities awaiting future development, as well as much mineral wealth.The population of Tsitsihar, in the latitude of middle North Dakota, swells from thirty thousand to seventythousand during September and October, when the Mongols bring in their cattle to market. In the middleprovince, at the head of steam navigation on the Sungari, because of the abundance and cheapness of lumber,Kirin has become a shipbuilding center for Chinese junks. The Sungari−Milky−river, is a large stream carryingmore water at flood season than the Amur above its mouth, the latter being navigable 450 miles for steamersdrawing twelve feet of water, and 1500 miles for those drawing four feet, so that during the summer season themiddle and northern provinces have natural inland waterways, but the outlet to the sea is far to the north andclosed by ice six months of the year.

Not far beyond the Great Wall of China, fast falling into ruin, partly through the appropriation of its material forbuilding purposes now that it has outlived its usefulness, another broad, nearly dry stream bed was crossed. There,in full bloom, was what appeared to be the wild white rose seen earlier, further south, west of Suchow, having a



remarkable profusion of small white bloom in clusters resembling the Rambler rose. One of these bushes growingwild there on the bank of the canal had over spread a clump of trees one of which was thirty feet in height,enveloping it in a mantle of bloom, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 204. The lower section of the illustration isa closer view showing the clusters. The stem of this rose, three feet above the ground, measured 14.5 inches incircumference. If it would thrive in this country nothing could be better for parks and pleasure drives. Later on ourjourney we saw it many times in bloom along the railway between Mukden and Antung, but nowhere attaining solarge growth. The blossoms are scant three−fourths inch in diameter, usually in compact clusters of three toeleven, sometimes in twos and occasionally standing singly. The leaves are five−foliate, sometimes trifoliate;leaflets broadly lanceolate, accuminate and finely serrate; thorns minute, recurrent and few, only on the smallerbranches.

In a field beyond, a small donkey was drawing a stone roller three feet long and one foot in diameter, firming thecrests of narrow, sharp, recently formed ridges, two at a time. Millet, maize and kaoliang were here the chiefcrops. Another nearly dry stream was crossed, where the fields became more rolling and much cut by deepgullies, the first instances we had seen in China except on the steep hillsides about Tsingtao. Not all of the landshere were cultivated, and on the untilled areas herds of fifty to a hundred goats, pigs, cattle, horses and donkeyswere grazing.

Fields in Manchuria are larger than in China and some rows were a full quarter of a mile long, so that cultivationwas being done with donkeys and cattle, and large numbers of men were working in gangs of four, seven, ten,twenty, and in one field as high as fifty, hoeing millet. Such a crew as the largest mentioned could probably behired at ten cents each, gold, per day, and were probably men from the thickly settled portions of Shantung whohad left in the spring, expecting to return in September or October. Both laborers and working animals weretaking dinner in the fields, and earlier in the day we had seen several instances where hay and feed were beingtaken to the field on a wooden sled, with the plow and other tools. At noon this was serving as manger for thecattle, mules or donkeys.

In fields where the close, deep furrowing and ridging was being done the team often consisted of a heavy ox andtwo small donkeys driven abreast, the three walking in adjacent rows, the plow following the ox, or a heavy muleinstead.

The rainy season had not begun and in many fields there was planting and transplanting where water was used inseparate hills, sometimes brought in pails from a nearby stream, and in other cases on carts provided with tanks.Holes were made along the crests of the ridges with the blade of a narrow hoe and a little water poured in eachhill, from a dipper, before planting or setting. These must have been other instances where the farmers werewilling to incur additional labor to save time for the maturing of the crop by assisting germination in a soil too dryto make it certain until the rains came.

It appears probable that the strong ridging and the close level rows so largely adopted here must have markedadvantages in utilizing the rainfall, especially the portions coming early, and that later also if it should come inheavy showers. With steep narrow ridging, heavy rains would be shed at once to the bottom of the deep furrowswithout over−saturating the ridges, while the wet soil in the bottom of the furrows would favor deep percolationwith lateral capillary flow taking place strongly under the ridges from the furrows, carrying both moisture andsoluble plant food where they will be most completely and quickly available. When the rain comes in heavyshowers each furrow may serve as a long reservoir which will prevent washing and at the same time permit quickpenetration; the ridges never becoming flooded or puddled, permit the soil air to escape readily as the water fromthe furrows sinks, as it cannot easily do in flat fields when the rains fall rapidly and fill all of the soil pores, thusclosing them to the escape of air from below, which must take place before the water can enter.

When rows are only twenty−four to twenty−eight inches apart, ridging is not sufficiently more wasteful of soilmoisture, through greater evaporation because of increased surface, to compensate for the other advantages



gained, and hence their practice, for their conditions, appears sound.

The application of finely pulverized earth compost to fields to be planted, and in some cases where the fields werealready planted, continued general after leaving Shanhailkwan as it had been before. Compost stacks werecommon in yards wherever buildings were close enough to the track to be seen. Much of the way about one−thirdof the fields were yet to be, or had just been, planted and in a great majority of these compost fertilizer had beenlaid down for use on them, or was being taken to them in large heavy carts drawn sometimes by three mules.Between Sarhougon and Ningyuenchow fourteen fields thus fertilized were counted in less than half a mile; tenothers in the next mile; eleven in the mile and a quarter following. In the next two miles one hundred fields werecounted and just before reaching the station we counted during five minutes, with watch in hand, ninety−fivefields to be planted, upon which this fertilizer had been brought. In some cases the compost was being spread infurrows between the rows of a last year's crop, evidently to be turned under, thus reversing the position of theridges.

After passing Lienshan, where, the railway runs near the sea, a sail was visible on the bay and many stacks of saltpiled about the evaporation fields were associated with the revolving sail windmills already described. Here, too,large numbers of cattle, horses, mules and donkeys were grazing on the untilled low lands, beyond which wetraversed a section where all fields were planted, where no fertilizer was piled in the field but where many groupsof men were busy hoeing, sometimes twenty in a gang.

Chinese soldiers with bayonetted guns stood guard at every railway station between Shanhaikwan and Mukden,and from Chinchowfu our coach was occupied by some Chinese official with guests and military attendants,including armed soldiers. The official and his guests were an attractive group of men with pleasant faces andwinning manners, clad in many garments of richly figured silk of bright, attractive, but unobtrusive, colors, whotalked, seriously or in mirth, almost incessantly. They took the train about one o'clock and lunch was immediatelyserved in Chinese style, but the last course was not brought until nearly four o'clock. At every station soldiersstood in line in the attitude of salute until the official car had passed.

Just before reaching Chinchowfu we saw the first planted fields littered with stubble of the previous crop, and inmany instances such stubble was being gathered and removed to the villages, large stacks having been piled in theyards to be used either as fuel or in the production of compost. As the train approached Taling ho groups of menwere hoeing in millet fields, thirty in one group on one side and fifty in another body on the other. Many smallherds of cattle, horses, donkeys and flocks of goats and sheep were feeding along stream courses and on theunplanted fields. Beyond the station, after crossing the river, still another sand dune tract was passed, planted withwillows, millet occupying the level areas between the dunes, and not far beyond, wide untilled flats were crossed,on which many herds were grazing and dotted with grave mounds as we neared Koupantze, where a branch of therailway traverses the Liao plain to the port of Newchwang. It was in this region that there came the firstsuggestion of resemblance to our marshland meadows; and very soon there were seen approaching from thedistance loads so green that except for the large size one would have judged them to be fresh grass. They wereloads of cured hay in the brightest green, the result, no doubt, of curing under their dry weather conditions.

At Ta Hu Shan large quantities of grain in sacks were piled along the tracks and in the freight yards, but undermatting shelters. Near here, too, large three−mule loads of dry earth compost were going to the fields and menwere busy pulverizing and mixing it on the threshing floors preparatory for use. Nearly all crops growing wereone or another of the millets, but considerable areas were yet unplanted and on these cattle, horses, mules anddonkeys were feeding and eight more loads of very bright new made hay crossed the track.

When the train reached Sinminfu where the railway turns abruptly eastward to cross the Liao ho to reach Mukdenwe saw the first extensive massing of the huge bean cakes for export, together with enormous quantities of soybeans in sacks piled along the railway and in the freight yards or loaded on cars made up in trains ready to move.Leaving this station we passed among fields of grain looking decidedly yellow, the first indication we had seen in



China of crops nitrogen−hungry and of soils markedly deficient in available nitrogen. Beyond the next station thefields were decidedly spotted and uneven as well as yellow, recalling conditions so commonly seen at home andwhich had been conspicuously absent here before. Crossing the Liao ho with its broad channel of shifting sands,the river carrying the largest volume of water we had yet seen, but the stream very low and still characteristic ofthe close of the dry season of semi−arid climates, we soon reached another station where the freight yards and allof the space along the tracks were piled high with bean cakes and yet the fields about were reflecting theimpoverished condition of the soil through the yellow crops and their uneven growth on the fields.

Since the Japanese−Russian war the shipments of soy beans and of bean cake from Manchuria have increasedenormously. Up to this time there had been exports to the southern provinces of China where the bean cakes wereused as fertilizers for the rice fields, but the new extensive markets have so raised the price that in severalinstances we were informed they could not then afford to use bean cake as fertilizer. From Newchwang alone, in1905, between January 1st and March 31st, there went abroad 2,286,000 pounds of beans and bean cake, but in1906 the amount had increased to 4,883,000 pounds. But a report published in the Tientsin papers as official,while we were there, stated that the value of the export of bean cake and soy beans from Dalny for the monthsending March 31st had been, in 1909, only $1,635,000, gold, compared with $3,065,000 in the correspondingperiod of 1908, and of $5,120,000 in 1907, showing a marked decrease.

Edward C. Parker, writing from Mukden for the Review of Reviews, stated: "The bean cake shipments fromNewchwang, Dalny and Antung in 1908 amounted to 515,198 tons; beans, 239,298 tons; bean oil, 1930 tons;having a total value of $15,016,649 (U. S. gold)". According to the composition of soy beans as indicated inHopkins' table of analyses, these shipments of beans and bean cake would remove an aggregate of 6171 tons ofphosphorus, 10,097 tons of potassium, and 47,812 tons of nitrogen from Manchurian soils as the result of exportfor that year. Could such a rate have been maintained during two thousand years there would have been sold fromthese soils 20,194,000 tons of potassium; 12,342,000 tons of phosphorus and 95,624,000 tons of nitrogen; and thephosphorus, were it thus exported, would have exceeded more than threefold all thus far produced in the UnitedStates; it would have exceeded the world's output in 1906 more than eighteen times, even assuming that allphosphate rock mined was seventy−five per cent pure.

The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple bread crops of northern China and Manchuria has beenquite as remarkable as the selection of rice for the more southern latitudes, and the two together have played amost important part in determining the high maintenance efficiency of these people. In nutritive value these grainsrank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties are extensively used for both fuel and building material andthe smaller forms make excellent forage and have been used directly for maintaining the organic content of thesoil. Their rapid development and their high endurance of drought adapt them admirably to the climate of northChina and Manchuria where the rains begin only after late June and where weather too cold for growth comesearlier in the fall. The quick maturity of these crops also permits them to be used to great advantage eventhroughout the south, in their systems of multiple cropping so generally adopted, while their great resistance todrought, being able to remain at a standstill for a long time when the soil is too dry for growth and yet be able topush ahead rapidly when favorable rains come, permits them to be used on the higher lands generally where wateris not available for irrigation.

In the Shantung province the large millet, sorghum or kaoliang, yields as high as 2000 to 3000 pounds of seed peracre, and 5600 to 6000 pounds of air−dry stems, equal in weight to 1.6 to 1.7 cords of dry oak wood. In the regionof Mukden, Manchuria, its average yield of seed is placed at thirty−five bushels of sixty pounds weight per acre,and with this comes one and a half tons of fuel or of building material. Hosie states that, the kaoliang is the staplefood of the population of Manchuria and the principal grain food of the work animals. The grain is first washed incold water and then poured into a kettle with four times its volume of boiling water and cooked for an hour,without salt, as with rice. It is eaten with chopsticks with boiled or salted vegetables. He states that an ordinaryservant requires about two pounds of this grain per day, and that a workman at heavy labor will take double theamount. A Chinese friend of his, keeping five servants, supplied them with 240 pounds of millet per month,



together with 16 pounds of native flour, regarded as sufficient for two days, and meat for two days, the amountnot being stated. Two of the small millets (Setaria italica, and Panicum milliaceum), wheat, maize and buckwheatare other grains which are used as food but chiefly to give variety and change of diet.

Very large quantities of matting and wrappings are also made from the leaves of the large millet, which servemany purposes corresponding with the rice mattings and bags of Japan and southern China.

The small millets, in Shantung, yield as high as 2700 pounds of seed and 4800 pounds of straw per acre. In Japan,in the year 1906, there were grown 737,719 acres of foxtail, barnyard and proso millet, yielding 17,084,000bushels of seed or an average of twenty−three bushels per acre. In addition to the millets, Japan grew, the sameyear, 5,964,300 bushels of buckwheat on 394,523 acres, or an average of fifteen bushels per acre. The nextengraving, Fig. 205, shows a crop of millet already six inches high planted between rows of windsor beans whichhad matured about the middle of June. The leaves had dropped, the beans had been picked from the stems, and alittle later, when the roots had had time to decay the bean stems would be pulled and tied in bundles for use asfuel or for fertilizer.

We had reached Mukden thoroughly tired after a long day of continuous close observation and writing. The AstorHouse, where we were to stop, was three miles from the station and the only conveyance to meet the train was afour−seated springless, open, semi−baggage carryall and it was a full hour lumbering its way to our hotel. Buthere as everywhere in the Orient the foreigner meets scenes and phases of life competent to divert his attentionfrom almost any discomfort. Nothing could be more striking than the peculiar mode the Manchu ladies have ofdressing their hair, seen in Fig. 206, many instances of which were passed on the streets during this early eveningride. It was fearfully and wonderfully done, laid in the smoothest, glossiest black, with nearly the lateral spread ofthe tail of a turkey cock and much of the backward curve of that of the rooster; far less attractive than the plainer,refined, modest, yet highly artistic style adopted by either Chinese or Japanese ladies.

The journey from Mukden to Antung required two days, the train stopping for the night at Tsaohokow. Our routelay most of the way through mountainous or steep hilly country and our train was made up of diminutive coachesdrawn by a tiny engine over a three−foot two−inch narrow gauge track of light rails laid by the Japanese duringthe war with Russia, for the purpose of moving their armies and supplies to the hotly contested fields in the Liaoand Sungari plains. Many of the grades were steep, the curves sharp, and in several places it was necessary todivide the short train to enable the engines to negotiate them.

To the southward over the Liao plain the crops were almost exclusively millet and soy beans, with a little barley,wheat, and a few oats. Between Mukden and the first station across the Hun river we had passed twenty−fourgood sized fields of soy beans on one side of the river and twenty−two on the other, and before reaching the hillycountry, after travelling a distance of possibly fifteen miles, we had passed 309 other and similar fields closealong the track. In this distance also we had passed two of the monuments erected by the Japanese, marking sitesof their memorable battles. These fields were everywhere flat, lying from sixteen to twenty feet above the beds ofthe nearly dry streams, and the cultivation was mostly being done with horses or cattle.

After leaving the plains country the railway traversed a narrow winding valley less than a mile wide, with gradientso steep that our train was divided. Fully sixty per cent of the hill slopes were cultivated nearly to the summit andyet rising apparently more than one in three to five feet, and the uncultivated slopes were closely wooded withyoung trees, few more than twenty to thirty feet high, but in blocks evidently of different ages. Beyond the passmany of the cultivated slopes have walled terraces. We crossed a large stream where railway ties were beingrafted down the river. Just beyond this river the train was again divided to ascend a gradient of one in thirty,reaching the summit by five times switching back, and matched on the other side of the pass by a down grade ofone in forty.



At many of the farm houses in the narrow valleys along the way large rectangular, flat topped compost piles werepassed, thirty to forty inches high and twenty, thirty, forty and even in one case as much as sixty feet square onthe ground. More and more it became evident that these mountain and hill lands were originally heavily woodedand that the new growth springs up quickly, developing rapidly. It was clear also that the custom of cutting overthese wooded areas at frequent intervals is very old, not always in the same stage of growth but usually when thetrees are quite small. Considerable quantities of cordwood were piled at the stations along the railway and werebeing loaded on the cars. This was always either round wood or sticks split but once; and much charcoal, mademostly from round wood or sticks split but once, was being shipped in sacks shaped like those used for rice, seenin Fig. 180. Some strips of the forest growth had been allowed to stand undisturbed apparently for twenty or moreyears, but most areas have been cut at more frequent intervals, often apparently once in three to five, or perhapsten, years.

At several places on the rapid streams crossed, prototypes of the modern turbine water−wheel were installed,doing duty grinding beans or grain. As with native machinery everywhere in China, these wheels were reduced tothe lowest terms and the principle put to work almost unclothed. These turbines were of the downward dischargetype, much resembling our modern windmills, ten to sixteen feet in diameter, set horizontally on a vertical axisrising through the floor of the mill, with the vanes surrounded by a rim, the water dropping through the wheel,reacting when reflected from the obliquely set vanes. American engineers and mechanics would pronounce thesevery crude, primitive and inefficient. A truer view would regard them as examples of a masterful grasp ofprinciple by some, man who long ago saw the unused energy of the stream and succeeded thus in turning it toaccount.

Both days of our journey had been bright and very warm and, although we took the train early in the morning atMukden, a young Japanese anticipated the heat, entering the train clad only in his kimono and sandals, carrying asuitcase and another bundle. He rode all day, the most comfortably, if immodestly, clad man on the train, and thenext morning took his seat in front of us clad in the same garb, but before the train reached Antung he took downhis suitcase and then and there, deliberately attired himself in a good foreign suit, folding his kimono and packingit away with his sandals.

From Antung we crossed the Yalu on the ferry to New Wiju at 6:30 A. M., June 22, and were then in quite adifferent country and among a very different people, although all of the railway officials, employes, police andguards were Japanese, as they had been from Mukden. At Antung and New Wiju the Yalu is a very broad slowstream resembling an arm of the sea more than a river, reminding one of the St. Johns at Jacksonville, Florida.

June 22nd proved to be one of the national festival days in Korea, called "Swing day", and throughout our entireride to Seoul the fields were nearly all deserted and throngs of people, arrayed in gala dress, appeared all alongthe line of the railway, sometimes congregating in bodies of two to three thousand or more, as seen in Fig. 207.Many swings had been hung and were being enjoyed by the young people. Boys and men were bathing in all sortsof "swimming holes" and places. So too, there were many large open air gatherings being addressed by publicspeakers, one of which is seen in Fig. 208.

Nearly everyone was dressed in white outer garments made from some fabric which although not mosquitonetting was nearly as open and possessed of a remarkable stiffness which seemed to take and retain every dentwith astonishing effect and which was sufficiently transparent to reveal a third undergarment. The full outstandingskirts of five Korean women may be seen in Fig. 209, and the trousers which went with these wereproportionately full but tied close about the ankles. The garments seemed to be possessed of a powerful repulsionwhich held them quite apart and away from the person, no doubt contributing much to comfort. It was windy butone of those hot sultry, sticky days, and it made one feel cool to see these open garments surging in the wind.

The Korean men, like the Chinese, wear the hair long but not braided in a queue. No part of the head is shaved butthe hair is wound in a tight coil on the top of the head, secured by a pin which, in the case of the Korean who rode



in our coach from Mukden to Antung, was a modern, substantial tenpenny wire nail. The tall, narrow, conicalcrowns of the open hats, woven from thin bamboo splints, are evidently designed to accommodate this style ofhair dressing as well as to be cool.

Here, too, as in China and Manchuria, nearly all crops are planted in rows, including the cereals, such as wheat,rye, barley and oats. We traversed first a flat marshy country with sandy soil and water not more than four feetbelow the surface where, on the lowest areas a close ally of our wild flower−de−luce was in bloom. Wheat wascoining into head but corn and millet were smaller than in Manchuria. We had left New Wiju at 7:30 in themorning and at 8:15 we passed from the low land into a hill country with narrow valleys. Scattering young pine,seldom more than ten to twenty−five feet high, occupied the slopes and as we came nearer the hills were seen tobe clothed with many small oak, the sprouts clearly not more than one or two years old. Roofs of dwellings in thecountry were usually thatched with straw laid after the manner of shingles, as may be seen in Fig. 210, where thehills beyond show the low tree growth referred to, but here unusually dense. Bundles of pine boughs, stacked andsheltered from the weather, were common along the way and evidently used for fuel.

At 8:25 we passed through the first tunnel and there were many along the route, the longest requiring thirtyseconds for the passing of the train. The valley beyond was occupied by fields of wheat where beans were plantedbetween the rows. Thus far none of the fields had been as thoroughly tilled and well cared for as those seen inChina, nor were the crops as good. Further along we passed hills where the pines were all of two ages, one setabout thirty feet high and the others twelve to fifteen feet or less, and among these were numerous oak sprouts.Quite possibly these are used as food for the wild silkworms. In some places appearances indicate that the oak andother deciduous growth, with the grass, may be cut annually and only the pines allowed to stand for longerperiods. As we proceeded southward and had passed Kosui the young oak sprouts were seen to cover the hills,often stretching over the slopes much like a regular crop, standing at a height of two to four feet, and freshbundles of these sprouts were seen at houses along the foot of the slopes, again suggesting that the leaves may befor the tussur silkworms although the time appears late for the first moulting. After we had left Seoul, entering thebroader valleys where rice was more extensively grown, the using of the oak boughs and green grass broughtdown from the hill lands for green manure became very extensive.

After the winter and early spring crops have been harvested the narrow ridges on which they are grown are turnedinto the furrows by means of their simple plow drawn by a heavy bullock, different from the cattle in China butclosely similar to those in Japan. The fields are then flooded until they have the appearance seen in Fig. 12. Overthese flooded ridges the green grass and oak boughs are spread, when the fields are again plowed and the materialworked into the wet soil. If this working is not completely successful men enter the fields and tramp the surfaceuntil every twig and blade is submerged. The middle section in this illustration has been fitted and transplanted; infront of it and on the left are two other fields once plowed but not fertilized; those far to the right have had thegreen manure applied and the ground plowed a second time but not finished, and in the immediate foreground thegrass and boughs have been scattered but the second plowing is not yet done.

We passed men and bullocks coming from the hill lands loaded with this green herbage and as we proceededtowards Fusan more and more of the hill area was being made to contribute materials for green manure for thecultivated fields. The foreground of Fig. 211 had been thus treated and so had the field in Fig. 212, where the manwas engaged in tramping the dressing beneath the surface. In very many cases this material was laid along themargin of the paddies; in other cases it had been taken upon the fields as soon as the grain was cut and was lyingin piles among the bundles; while in still other cases the material for green manure had been carried between therows while the grain was still standing, but nearly ready to harvest. In some fields a full third of a bushel of thegreen stuff had been laid down at intervals of three feet over the whole area. In other cases piles of ashesalternated with those of herbage, and again manure and ashes mixed had been distributed in alternate piles withthe green manure.



In still other cases we saw untreated straw distributed through the fields awaiting application. At Shindo this,straw had the appearance of having been dipped in or smeared with some mixture, apparently of mud and ashes orpossibly of some compost which had been worked into a thin paste with water.

After passing Keizan, mountain herbage had been brought down from the hills in large bales on cleverlyconstructed racks saddled to the backs of bullocks, and in one field we saw a man who had just come to his littlefield with an enormous load borne upon his easel−like packing appliance. Thus we find the Koreans also adoptingthe rice crop, which yields heavily under conditions of abundant water; we find them supplementing a heavysummer rainfall with water from their hills, and bringing to their fields besides both green herbage for humus andorganic matter, and ashes derived from the fuel coming also from the hills, in these ways making good theunavoidable losses, through intense cropping.

The amount of forest growth in Korea, as we saw it, in proximity to the cultivated valleys, is nowhere large and isfairly represented in Figs. 210, 213 and 214. There were clear evidences of periodic cutting and considerable,amounts of cordwood split from timber a foot through were being brought to the stations on the backs of cattle. Insome places there was evident and occasionally very serious soil erosion, as may be seen in Fig. 214, one suchregion being passed just before reaching Kinusan, but generally the hills are well rounded and covered with a lowgrowth of shrubs and herbaceous plants.

Southernmost Korea has the latitude of the northern boundary of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama andMississippi, while the northeast corner attains that of Madison, Wisconsin, and the northern boundary ofNebraska, the country thus spanning some nine degrees and six hundred miles of latitude. It has an area of some82,000 square miles, about equaling the state of Minnesota, but much of its surface is occupied by steep hill andmountain land. The rainy season had not yet set in, June 23rd. Wheat and the small grains were practically allharvested southward of Seoul and the people were everywhere busy with their flails threshing in the open, aboutthe dwellings or in the fields, four flails often beating together on the same lot of grain. As we journeyedsouthward the valleys and the fields became wider and more extensive, and the crops, as well as the culturalmethods, were clearly much better.

Neither the foot−power, animal−power, nor the wooden chain pump of the Chinese were observed in Korea in usefor lifting water, but we saw many instances of the long handled, spoonlike swinging scoop hung over the waterby a cord from tall tripods, after the manner seen in Fig. 215, each operated by one man and apparently with highefficiency for low lifts. Two instances also were observed of the form of lift seen in Fig. 173, where the manwalks the circumference of the wheel, so commonly observed in Japan. Much hemp was being grown in southernKorea but everywhere on very small isolated areas which flecked the landscape with the deepest green, each littlefield probably representing the crop of a single family.

It was 6:30 P. M. when our train reached Fusan after a hot and dusty ride. The service had been good and fairlycomfortable but the ice−water tanks of American trains were absent, their place being supplied by cooled bottledwaters of various brands, including soda−water, sold by Japanese boys at nearly every important station. Closeconnection was made by trains with steamers to and from Japan and we went directly on board the Iki Maruwhich was to weigh anchor for Moji and Shimonoseki at 8 P. M. Although small, the steamer was well equipped,providing the best of service. We were fortunate in having a smooth passage, anchoring at 6:30 the next morningand making close connection with the train for Nagasaki, landing at the wharf with the aid of a steam launch.

Our ride by train through the island of Kyushu carried us through scenes not widely different from those we hadjust left. The journey was continuously among fields of rice, with Korean features strongly marked but usuallyunder better and more intensified culture, and the season, too, was a little more advanced. Here the plowing wasbeing done mostly with horses instead of the heavy bullocks so exclusively employed in Korea. Coming fromChina into Korea, and from there into Japan, it appeared very clear that in agricultural methods and appliances theKoreans and Japanese are more closely similar than the Chinese and Koreans, and the more we came to see of the



Japanese methods the more strongly the impression became fixed that the Japanese had derived their methodseither from the Koreans or the Koreans had taken theirs more largely from Japan than from China.

It was on this ride from Moji to Nagasaki that we were introduced to the attractive and very satisfactory mannerof serving lunches to travelers on the trains in Japan. At important stations hot tea is brought to the car windowsin small glazed, earthenware teapots provided with cover and bail, and accompanied with a teacup of the sameware. The set and contents could be purchased for five sen, two and a half cents, our currency. All tea is servedwithout milk or sugar. The lunches were very substantial and put together in a neat sanitary manner in athree−compartment wooden box, carefully made from clear lumber joined with wooden pegs and perfect joints.Packed in the cover we found a paper napkin, toothpicks and a pair of chopsticks. In the second compartmentthere were thin slices of meat, chicken and fish, together with bamboo sprouts, pickles, cakes and small bits ofsalted vegetables, while the lower and chief compartment was filled with rice cooked quite stiff and without salt,as is the custom in the three countries. The box was about six inches long, four inches deep and three and a halfinches wide. These lunches are handed to travelers neatly wrapped in spotless thin white paper daintily tied with abit of color, all in exchange for 25 sen,−−12.5 cents. Thus for fifteen cents the traveler is handed, through the carwindow, in a respectful manner, a square meal which he may eat at his leisure.

XVII. RETURN TO JAPAN

We had returned to Japan in the midst of the first rainy season, and all the day through, June 25th, and two nights,a gentle rain fell at Nagasaki, almost without interruption. Across the narrow street from Hotel Japan were two ofits guest houses, standing near the front of a wall−faced terrace rising twenty−eight feet above the street andfacing the beautiful harbor. They were accessible only by winding stone steps shifting on paved landings tocontinue the ascent between retaining walls overhung with a wealth of shrubbery clothed in the densest foliage, sogreen and liquid in the drip of the rain, that one almost felt like walking edgewise amid stairs lest the drip shouldleave a stain. Over such another series of steps, but longer and more winding, we found our way to the AmericanConsulate where in the beautifully secluded quarters Consul−General Scidmore escaped many annoyances ofsettling the imagined petty grievances arising between American tourists and the ricksha boys.

Through the kind offices of the Imperial University of Sapporo and of the National Department of Agriculture andCommerce, Professor Tokito met us at Nagasaki, to act as escort through most of the journey in Japan. Our firstvisit was to the prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station at Nagasaki. There are four others in the four mainislands, one to an average area of 4280 square miles, and to each 1,200,000 people. The island of Kyushu, whoselatitude is that of middle Mississippi and north Louisiana, has two rice harvests, and gardeners at Nagasaki growthree crops, each year. The gardener and his family work about five tan, or a little less than one and one−quarteracres, realizing an annual return of some $250 per acre. To maintain these earnings fertilizers are applied ratedworth $60 per acre, divided between the three crops, the materials used being largely the wastes of the city,animal manure, mud from the drains, fuel ashes and sod, all composted together. If this expenditure for fertilizersappears high it must be remembered that nearly the whole product is sold and that there are three crops each year.Such intense culture requires a heavy return if large yields are maintained. Good agricultural lands were herevalued at 300 yen per tan, approximately $600 per acre.

When returning toward Moji to visit the Agricultural Experiment Station of Fukuoka prefecture, the rice along thefirst portion of the route was standing about eight inches above the water. Large lotus ponds along the wayoccupied areas not readily drained, and the fringing fields between the rice paddies and the untilled hill lands werebearing squash, maize, beans and Irish potatoes. Many small areas had been set to sweet potatoes on close narrowridges, the tops of which were thinly strewn with green grass, or sometimes with straw or other litter, for shadeand to prevent the soil from washing and baking in the hot sun after rains. At Kitsu we passed near Governmentsalt works, for the manufacture of salt by the evaporation of sea water, this industry in Japan, as in China, being aGovernment monopoly.


XVII. RETURN TO JAPAN 101

Many bundles of grass and other green herbage were collected along the way, gathered for use in the rice fields.In other cases the green manure had already been spread over the flooded paddies and was being worked beneaththe surface, as seen in Fig. 216. At this time the hill lands were clothed in the richest, deepest green but the treegrowth was nowhere large except immediately about temples, and was usually in distinct small areas with sharpboundaries occasioned by differences in age. Some tracts had been very recently cut; others were in their second,third or fourth years; while others still carried a growth of perhaps seven to ten years. At one village manybundles of the brush fuel had been gathered from an adjacent area, recently cleared.

A few fields were still bearing their crop of soy beans planted in February between rows of grain, and the greenherbage was being worked into the flooded soil, for the crop of rice. Much compost, brought to the fields, wasstacked with layers of straw between, laid straight, the alternate courses at right angles, holding the piles inrectangular form with vertical sides, some of which were four to six feet high and the layers of compost about sixinches thick.

Just before reaching Tanjiro, a region is passed where orchards of the candleberry tree occupy high leveled areasbetween rice paddies, after the manner described for the mulberry orchards in Chekiang, China. These trees, whenseen from a distance, have quite the appearance of our apple orchards.

At the Fukuoka Experiment Station we learned that the usual depth of plowing for the rice fields is three and ahalf to four and a half inches, but that deeper plowing gives somewhat larger yields. As an average of five yearstrials, a depth of seven to eight inches increased the yield from seven to ten per cent over that of the usual depth.In this prefecture grass from the bordering hill lands is applied to the rice fields at rates ranging from 3300 to16,520 pounds green weight per acre, and, according to analyses given, these amounts would carry to, the fieldsfrom 18 to 90 pounds of nitrogen; 12.4 to 63.2 pounds of potassium, and 2.1 to 10.6 pounds of phosphorus peracre.

Where bean cake is used as a fertilizer the applications may be at the rate of 496 pounds per acre, carrying 33.7pounds of nitrogen, nearly 5 pounds of phosphorus and 7.4 pounds of potassium. The earth composts are chieflyapplied to the dry land fields and then only after they are well rotted, the fermentation being carried through atleast sixty days, during which the material is turned three times for aeration, the work being done at the home.When used on the rice fields where water is abundant the composts are applied in a less fermented condition.

The best yields of rice in this prefecture are some eighty bushels per acre, and crops of barley may even exceedthis, the two crops being grown the same year, the rice following the barley. In most parts of Japan the grain foodof the laboring people is about 70 per cent naked barley mixed with 30 per cent of rice, both cooked and used inthe same manner. The barley has a lower market value and its use permits a larger share of the rice to be sold as amoney crop.

The soils are fertilized for each crop every year and the prescription for barley and rice recommended by theExperiment Station, for growers in this prefecture, is indicated by the following table:

FERTILIZATION FOR NAKED BARLEY. Pounds per acre. Fertilizers. N P KManure compost 6,613 33.0 7.4 33.8Rape seed cake 330 16.7 2.8 3.5Night soil 4,630 26.4 2.6 10.2Superphosphate 132 9.9 −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Sum 11,705 76.1 22.7 47.5

FERTILIZATION FOR PADDY RICE.



Manure compost 5,291 26.4 5.9 27.1Green manure, soy beans 3,306 19.2 1.1 19.6Soy bean cake 397 27.8 1.7 6.4Superphosphate 198 12.8 −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Sum 9,192 73.4 21.5 53.1 ====== ===== ==== =====Total for year 20,897 149.5 44.2 100.6

Where these recommendations are followed there is an annual application of fertilizer material which aggregatessome ten tons per acre, carrying about 150 pounds of nitrogen, 44 pounds of phosphorus and 100 pounds ofpotassium. The crop yields which have been associated with these applications on the Station fields are aboutforty−nine bushels of barley and fifty bushels of rice per acre.

The general rotation recommended for this portion of Japan covers five years and consists of a crop of wheat ornaked barley the first two years with rice as the summer crop; in the third year genge, "pink clover" (Astragalussinicus) or some other legume for green manure is the winter crop, rice following in the summer; the fourth yearrape is the winter crop, from which the seed is saved and the ash of the stems returned to the soil, or rarely thestems themselves may be turned under; on the fifth and last year of the rotation the broad kidney or windsor beanis the winter crop, preceding the summer crop of rice. This rotation is not general yet in the practice of the farmersof the section, they choosing rape or barley and in February plant windsor or soy beans between the rows forgreen manure to use when the rice comes on.

It was evident from our observations that the use of composts in fertilizing was very much more general andextensive in China than it was in either Korea or Japan, but, to encourage the production and use of compostfertilizers, this and other prefectures have provided subsidies which permit the payment of $2.50 annually to thosefarmers who prepare and use on their land a compost heap covering twenty to forty square yards, in accordancewith specified directions given.

The agricultural college at Fukuoka was not in session the day of our visit, it being a holiday usually following theclose of the last transplanting season. One of the main buildings of the station and college is seen in Fig. 217, andFigs. 218, 219 and 220, placed together from left to right in the order of their numbers, form a panoramic view ofthe station grounds and buildings with something of the beautiful landscape setting. There is nowhere in Japan thelavish expenditure of money on elaborate and imposing architecture which characterizes American colleges andstations, but in equipment for research work, both as to professional staff and appliances, they compare favorablywith similar institutions in America. The dormitory system was in vogue in the college, providing room and boardat eight yen per month or four dollars of our currency. Eight students were assigned to one commodious room,each provided with a study table, but beds were mattresses spread upon the matting floor at night and compactlystored on closet shelves during the day.

The Japanese plow, which is very similar to the Korean type, may be seen in Fig. 221, the one on the right costing2.5 yen and the other 2 yen. With the aid of the single handle and the sliding rod held in the right hand, the courseof the plow is directed and the plow tilted in either direction, throwing the soil to the right or the left.

The nursery beds for rice breeding experiments and variety tests by this station are shown in Fig. 222. Althoughthese plots are flooded the marginal plants, adjacent to the free water paths, were materially larger than thosewithin and had a much deeper green color, showing better feeding, but what seemed most strange was the fact thatthese stronger plants are never used in transplanting, as they do not thrive as well as those less vigorous.

We left the island of Kyushu in the evening of June 29th, crossing to the main island of Honshu, waiting inShimonoseki for the morning train. The rice−planted valleys near Shimonoseki were relatively broad and the



paddies had all been recently set in close rows about a foot apart and in hills in the rows. Mountain and hill landswere closely wooded, largely with coniferous trees about the base but toward and at the summits, especially onthe South slopes, they were green only with herbage cut for fertilizing and feeding stock. Many very small trees,often not more than one foot high, were growing on the recently cut−over areas; tall slender graceful bamboosclustered along the way and everywhere threw wonderful beauty into the landscape. Cartloads of their slenderstems, two to four inches in diameter at the base and twenty or more feet long, were moving along the generallyexcellent, narrow, seldom fenced roads, such as seen in Fig. 223. On the borders and pathways between ricepaddies many small stacks of straw were in waiting to be laid between the rows of transplanted rice, trampedbeneath the water and overspread with mud to enrich the soil. The farmers here, as elsewhere, must contendagainst the scouring rush, varieties of grass and our common pigweeds, even in the rice fields. The large area ofmountain and hill land compared with that which could be tilled, and the relatively small area of cultivated landnot at this time under water and planted to rice persisted throughout the journey.

If there could be any monotony for the traveller new to this land of beauty it must result from the quick shifting ofscenes and in the way the landscapes are pieced together, out−doing the craziest patchwork woman everattempted; the bits are almost never large; they are of every shape, even puckered and crumpled and tilted at allangles. Here is a bit of the journey: Beyond Habu the foothills are thickly wooded, largely with conifers. Thevalley is extremely narrow with only small areas for rice. Bamboo are growing in congenial places and we passbundles of wood cut to stove length, as seen in Fig. 224. Then we cross a long narrow valley practically all in rice,and then another not half a mile wide, just before reaching Asa. Beyond here the fields become limited in areawith the bordering low hills recently cut over and a new growth springing up over them in the form of smallshrubs among which are many pine. Now we are in a narrow valley between small rice fields or with none at all,but dash into one more nearly level with wide areas in rice chiefly on one side of the track just before reachingOnoda at 10:30 A. M. and continuing three minutes ride beyond, when we are again between hills without fieldsand where the trees are pine with clumps of bamboo. In four minutes more we are among small rice paddies andat 10:35 have passed another gap and are crossing another valley checkered with rice fields and lotus ponds, butin one minute more the hills have closed in, leaving only room for the track. At 10:37 we are running along anarrow valley with its terraced rice paddies where many of the hills show naked soil among the bamboo,scattering pine and other small trees; then we are out among garden patches thickly mulched with straw. At 10:38we are between higher hills with but narrow areas for rice stretching close along the track, but in two minutesthese are passed and we are among low hills with terraced dry fields. At 10:42 we are spinning along the levelvalley with its rice, but are quickly out again among hills with naked soil where erosion was marked. This is justbefore passing Funkai where we are following the course of a stream some sixty feet wide with but littlecultivated land in small areas. At 10:47 we are again passing narrow rice fields near the track where the people arebusy weeding with their hands, half knee−deep in water. At 10:53 we enter a broader valley stretching far to thesouth and seaward, but we had crossed it in one minute, shot through another gap, and at 10:55 are traversing amuch broader valley largely given over to rice, but where some of the paddies were bearing matting rush set inrows and in hills after the manner of rice. It is here we pass Oyou and just beyond cross a stream confinedbetween levees built some distance back from either bank. At 11:17 this plain is left and we enter a narrow valleywithout fields. Thus do most of the agricultural lands of Japan lie in the narrowest valleys, often steeply sloping,and into which jutting spurs create the greatest irregularity of boundary and slope.

The journey of this day covered 350 miles in fourteen hours, all of the way through a country of remarkable andpeculiar beauty which can be duplicated nowhere outside the mountainous, rice−growing Orient and there onlyduring fifteen days closing the transplanting season. There were neither high mountains nor broad valleys, nogreat rivers and but few lakes; neither rugged naked rocks, tall forest trees nor wide level fields reaching away tounbroken horizons. But the low, rounded, soil−mantled mountain tops clothed in herbaceous and young forestgrowth fell everywhere into lower hills and these into narrow steep valleys which dropped by a series ofwater−level benches, as seen in Fig. 225, to the main river courses. Each one of these millions of terraces, setabout by its raised rim, was a silvery sheet of water dotted in the daintiest manner with bunches of rice justtransplanted, but not so close nor yet so high and over−spreading as to obscure the water, yet quite enough to



impart to the surface a most delicate sheen of green; and the grass−grown narrow rims retaining the water in thebasins, cemented them into series of the most superb mosaics, shaped into the valley bottoms by artizan artistsperhaps two thousand years before and maintained by their descendants through all the years since, that on themthe rains and fertility from the mountains and the sunshine from heaven might be transformed by the rice plantinto food for the families and support for the nation. Two weeks earlier the aspect of these landscapes was verydifferent, and two weeks later the reflecting water would lie hidden beneath the growing and rapidly developingmantle of green, to go on changing until autumn, when all would be overspread with the ripened harvest of grain.And what intensified the beauty of it all was the fact that only along the widest valley bottoms were the mosaicslevel, except the water surface of each individual unit and these were always small. At one time we were ridingalong a descending series of steps and then along another rising through a winding valley to disappear around aprojecting spur, and anywhere in the midst of it all might be standing Japanese cottages or villas with the waterand the growing rice literally almost against the walls, as seen in Fig. 226, while a near−by high terrace mighthold its water on a level with the chimney−tops. Can one wonder that the Japanese loves his country or that theyare born and bred landscape artists?

Just before reaching Hongo there were considerable areas thrown into long narrow, much−raised, east and westbeds under covers of straw matting inclined at a slight angle toward the south, some two feet above the ground butopen toward the north. What crop may have been grown here we did not learn but the matting was apparentlyintended for shade, as it was hot midsummer weather, and we suspect it may have been ginseng. It was here, too,that we came into the region of the culture of matting rush, extensively grown in Hiroshima and Okayamaprefectures, but less extensively all over the empire. As with rice, the rush is first grown in nursery beds fromwhich it is transplanted to the paddies, one acre of nursery supplying sufficient stock for ten acres of field. Theplants are set twenty to thirty stalks in a hill in rows seven inches apart with the hills six inches from center tocenter in the row. Very high fertilization is practiced, costing from 120 to 240 yen per acre, or $60 to $120annually, the fertilizer consisting of bean cake and plant ashes, or in recent years, sometimes of sulphate ofammonia for nitrogen, and superphosphate of lime. About ten per cent of the amount of fertilizer required for thecrop is applied at the time of fitting the ground, the balance being administered from time to time as the seasonadvances. Two crops of the rush may be taken from the same ground each year or it is grown in rotation with rice,but most extensively on the lands less readily drained and not so well suited for other crops. Fields of the rush,growing in alternation with rice, are seen in Fig. 45, and in Fig. 227, with the Government salt fields lying alongthe seashore beyond.

With the most vigorous growth the rush attain a height exceeding three feet and the market price varies materiallywith the length of the stems. Good yields, under the best culture, may be as high as 6.5 tons per acre of the drystems but the average yield is less, that of 1905 being 8531 pounds, for 9655 acres, The value of the productranges from $120 to $200 per acre.

It is from this material that mats are woven in standard sizes, to be laid over padding, upholstering the floorswhich are the seats of all classes in Japan, used in the manner seen in Fig. 228 and in Fig. 229, which is acompletely furnished guest room in a first class Japanese inn, finished in natural unvarnished wood, with walls ofsliding panels of translucent paper, which may open upon a porch, into a hallway or into another apartment; andwith its bouquet, which may consist of a single large shapely branch of the purple leaved maple, having the cutend charred to preserve it fresh for a longer time, standing in water in the vase.

"Two little maids I've heard of, each with a pretty taste, Who had two little rooms to fix and not an hour to waste.Eight thousand miles apart they lived, yet on the selfsame day The one in Nikko's narrow streets, the other onBroadway, They started out, each happy maid her heart's desire to find, And her own dear room to furnish justaccording to her mind.

When Alice went a−shopping, she bought a bed of brass, A bureau and some chairs and things and such a lovelyglass To reflect her little figure−−with two candle brackets near−− And a little dressing table that she said was



simply dear! A book shelf low to hold her books, a little china rack, And then, of course, a bureau set and lots ofbric−a−brac; A dainty little escritoire, with fixings all her own And just for her convenience, too, a littletelephone. Some oriental rugs she got, and curtains of madras, With 'cunning' ones of lace inside, to go against theglass; And then a couch, a lovely one, with cushions soft to crush, And forty pillows, more or less, of linen, silkand plush; Of all the ornaments besides I couldn't tell the half, But wherever there was nothing else, she stuck aphotograph. And then, when all was finished, she sighed a little sigh, And looked about with just a shade ofsadness in her eye: 'For it needs a statuette or so−−a fern−−a silver stork Oh, something, just to fill it up!' saidAlice of New York.

When little Oumi of Japan went shopping, pitapat, She bought a fan of paper and a little sleeping mat; She setbeside the window a lily in a vase, And looked about with more than doubt upon her pretty face: 'For,really−−don't you think so?−−with the lily and the fan. It's a little overcrowded!' said Oumi of Japan."

(Margaret Johnson in St. Nicholas Magazine)

In the rural homes of Japan during 1906 there were woven 14,497,058 sheets of these floor mats and 6,628,772sheets of other matting, having a combined value of $2,815,040, and in addition, from the best quality of rushgrown upon the same ground, aggregating 7657 acres that year, there were manufactured for the export trade,fancy mattings, having the value of $2,274,131. Here is a total value, for the product of the soil and for the laborput into the manufacture, amounting to $664 per acre for the area named.

At the Akashi agricultural experiment station, under the Directorship of Professor Ono, we saw some of themethods of fruit culture as practiced in Japan. He was conducting experiments with the object of improvingmethods of heading and training pear trees, to which reference was made on page 22. A study was also beingmade of the advantages and disadvantages associated with covering the fruit with paper bags, examples of whichare seen in Figs. 6 and 7. The bags were being made at the time of our visit, from old newspapers cut, folded andpasted by women. Naked cultivation was practiced in the orchard, and fertilizers consisting of fish guano andsuperphosphate of lime were being applied twice each year in amounts aggregating a cost of twenty−four dollarsper acre.

Pear orchards of native varieties, in good bearing, yield returns of 150 yen per tan, and those of Europeanvarieties, 200 yen per tan, which is at the rate of $300 and $400 per acre. The bibo, so extensively grown in Chinawas being cultivated here also and was yielding about $320 per acre.

It was here that we first met the cultivation of a variety of burdock grown from the seed, three crops being takeneach season where the climate is favorable, or as one of three in the multiple crop system. It is grown for the root,yielding a crop valued at $40 to $50 per acre. One crop, planted, in March, was being harvested July 1st.

During our ride to Akashi on the early morning train we passed long processions of carts drawn by cattle, horsesor by men, moving along the country road which paralleled the railway, all loaded with the waste of the city ofKobe, going to its destination in the fields, some of it a distance of twelve miles, where it was sold at from 54cents to $1.63 per ton.

At several places along our route from Shimonoseki to Osaka we had observed the application of slacked lime tothe water of the rice fields, but in this prefecture, Hyogo, where the station is located, its use was prohibited in1901, except under the direction of the station authorities, where the soil was acid or where it was needed onaccount of insect troubles. Up to this time it had been the custom of farmers to apply slacked lime at the rate ofthree to five tons per acre, paying for it $4.84 per ton. The first restrictive legislation permitted the use of 82pounds of lime with each 827 pounds of organic manure, but as the farmers persisted in using much largerquantities, complete prohibition was resorted to.



Reference has been made to subsidies encouraging the use of composts, and in this prefecture prizes are awardedfor the best compost heaps in each county, examinations being made by a committee. The composts receiving thefour highest awards in each county are allowed to compete with those in other counties for a prefectural prizeawarded by another committee.

The "pink clover" grown in Hyogo after rice, as a green manure crop, yields under favorable conditions twentytons of the green product per acre, and is usually applied to about three times the area upon which it grew, at therate of 6.6 tons per acre, the stubble and roots serving for the ground upon which the crop grew.

On July 3rd we left Osaka, going south through Sakai to Wakayama, thence east and north to the NaraExperiment Station. After passing the first two stations the route lay through a very flat, highly cultivated gardensection with cucumbers trained on trellises, many squash in full bloom, with fields of taro, ginger and many othervegetables. Beyond Hamadera considerable areas of flat sandy land had been set close with pine, but withintervening areas in rice, where the growers were using the revolving weeder seen in Fig. 14. At Otsu broad areasare in rice but here worked with the short handled claw weeders, and stubble from a former crop had been drawntogether into small piles, seen in Fig. 230, which later would be carefully distributed and worked beneath themud.

Much of the mountain lands in this region, growing pine, is owned by private parties and the growth is cut atintervals of ten, twenty or twenty−five years, being sold on the ground to those who will come and cut it at a priceof forty sen for a one−horse load, as already described, page 159.

The course from here was up the rather rapidly rising Kiigawa valley where much water was being applied to therice fields by various methods of pumping, among them numerous current wheels; an occasional power−pumpdriven by cattle; and very commonly the foot−power wheel where the man walks on the circumference, steadyinghimself with a long pole, as seen in the field, Fig. 231. It was here that a considerable section of the hill slope hadbeen very recently cut over, the area showing light in the engraving. It was in the vicinity of Hashimoto on thisroute, too, that the two beautiful views reproduced in Figs. 151 and 152 were taken.

At the experiment station it was learned that within the prefecture of Nara, having a population of 558,314, and107,574 acres of cultivated land, two−thirds of this was in paddy rice. Within the province there are also aboutone thousand irrigation reservoirs with an average depth of eight feet. The rice fields receive 16.32 inches ofirrigation water in addition to the rain.

Of the uncultivated hill lands, some 2500 acres contribute green manure for fertilization of fields. Reference hasbeen made to the production of compost for fertilizers on page 211. The amount recommended in this prefectureas a yearly application for two crops grown is:

Organic matter 3,711 to 4,640 lbs. per acre Nitrogen 105 to 131 lbs. per acre Phosphorus 35 to 44 lbs. per acrePotassium 56 to 70 lbs. per acre

These amounts, on the basis of the table, p. 214, are nearly sufficient for a crop of thirty bushels of wheat,followed by one of thirty bushels of rice, the phosphorus being in excess and the potassium not quite enough,supposing none to be derived from other sources.

At the Nara hotel, one of the beautiful Japanese inns where we stopped, our room opened upon a second storyveranda from which one looked down upon a beautiful, tiny lakelet, some twenty by eighty feet, within adiminutive park scarcely more than one hundred by two hundred feet, and the lakelet had its grassy, rocky banksover−hung with trees and shrubs planted in all the wild disorder and beauty of nature; bamboo, willow, fir, pine,cedar, red−leaved maple, catalpa, with other kinds, and through these, along the shore, wound a woodsy, welltrodden, narrow footpath leading from the inn to a half hidden cottage apparently quarters for the maids, as they



were frequently passing to and fro. A suggestion of how such wild beauty is brought right to the very doors inJapan may be gained from Fig. 232, which is an instance of parking effect on a still smaller scale than thatdescribed.

On the morning of July 6th, with two men for each of our rickshas, we left the Yaami hotel for the KyotoExperiment station, some two miles to the southwest of the city limits. As soon as we had entered upon thecountry road we found ourselves in a procession of cart men each drawing a load of six large covered receptaclesof about ten gallons capacity, and filled with the city's waste. Before reaching the station we had passed fifty−twoof these loads, and on our return the procession was still moving in the same direction and we passed sixty−oneothers, so that during at least five hours there had moved over this section of road leading into the country, awayfrom the city, not less than ninety tons of waste; along other roadways similar loads were moving. These freightcarts and those drawn by horses and bullocks were all provided with long racks similar to that illustrated in Fig.108, page 197, and when the load is not sufficient to cover the full length it is always divided equally and placednear each end, thus taking advantage of the elasticity of the body to give the effect of springs, lessening the draftand the wear and tear,

One of the most common commodities coming into the city along the country roads was fuel from the hill lands,in split sticks tied in bundles as represented in Fig. 224; as bundles of limbs twenty−four to thirty inches, andsometimes four to six feet, long; and in the form of charcoal made from trunks and stems one and a half inches tosix inches long, and baled in straw matting. Most of the draft animals used in Japan are either cows, bulls orstallions; at least we saw very few oxen and few geldings.

As early as 1895 the Government began definite steps looking to the improvement of horse breeding, appointingat that time a commission to devise comprehensive plans. This led to progressive steps finally culminating in1906 in the Horse Administration Bureau, whose duties were to extend over a period of thirty years, divided intotwo intervals, the first, eighteen and the second, twelve years. During the first interval it is contemplated that theGovernment shall acquire 1,500 stallions to be distributed throughout the country for the use of privateindividuals, and during the second period it is the expectation that the system will have completely renovated thestock and familiarized the people with proper methods of management so that matters may be left in their hands.

As our main purpose and limited time required undivided attention to agricultural matters, and of these to the longestablished practices of the people, we could give but little time to sight−seeing or even to a study of the effortsbeing made for the introduction of improved agricultural methods and practices. But in the very old city of Kyoto,which was the seat of the Mikado's court from before 800 A. D. until 1868, we did pay a short visit to theKiyomizu temple, situated some three hundred yards south from the Yaami hotel, which faces the Maruyaamipark with its centuries−old giant cherry tree, having a trunk of more than four feet through and wide spreadingbranches, now much propped up to guard against accident, as seen in Fig. 233. These cherry trees are veryextensively used for ornamental purposes in Japan with striking effect. The tree does not produce an edible fruit,but is very beautiful when in full bloom, as may be seen from Fig. 234. It was these trees that were sent by theJapanese government to this country for use at Washington but the first lot were destroyed because they werefound to be infested and threatened danger to native trees.

Kyoto stands amid surroundings of wonderful beauty, the site apparently having been selected with rare acumenfor its possibilities in large landscape effects, and these have been developed with that fullness and richness whichthe greatest artists might be content to approach. We are thinking particularly of the Kiyomizu−dera, or rather ofthe marvelous beauty of tree and foliage which has overgrown it and swept far up and over the mountain summit,leaving the temple half hidden at the base. No words, no brush, no photographic art can transfer the effect. Onemust see to feel the influence for which it was created, and scores of people, very old and very young, nearly allJapanese, and more of them on that day from the poorer rather than from the well−to−do class, were there, allwithdrawing reluctantly, like ourselves, looking backward, under the spell. So potent and impressive was thatsomething from the great overshadowing beauty of the mountain, that all along up the narrow, shop−lined street



leading to the gateway of the temple, seen in Fig. 235, the tiniest bits of park effect were flourishing in the mostimpossible situations; and as Professor Tokito and myself were coming away we chanced upon six little roughlydressed lads laying out in the sand an elaborate little park, quite nine by twelve feet. They must have been at ithours, for there were ponds, bridges, tiny hills and ravines and much planting in moss and other little greens. Sointent on their task were they that we stood watching full two minutes before our presence attracted theirattention, and yet the oldest of the group must have been under ten years of age.

One partly hidden view of the temple is seen in Fig. 236, the dense mountain verdure rising above and beyond it.And then too, within the temple, as the peasant men and women came before the shrine and grasped the longdepending rope knocker, with the heavy knot in front of the great gong, swinging it to strike three rings,announcing their presence before their God, then kneeling to offer prayers, one could not fail to realize the deepsincerity and faith expressed in face and manner, while they were oblivious to all else. No Christian was evermore devout and one may well doubt if any ever arose from prayer more uplifted than these. Who need believethey did not look beyond the imagery and commune with the Eternal Spirit?

A third view of the same temple, showing resting places beneath the shade, which serve the purpose of lawn seatsin our parks, is seen in Fig. 237.

That a high order of the esthetic sense is born to the Japanese people; that they are masters of the science of thebeautiful; and that there are artists among them capable of effective and impressive results, is revealed in ahundred ways, and one of these is the iris garden of Fig. 238. One sees it here in the bulrushes which make the irisfeel at home; in the unobtrusive semblance of a log that seems to have fallen across the run; in the hard beatennarrow path and the sore toes of the old pine tree, telling of the hundreds that come and go; it is seen in the dressand pose of the ladies, and one may be sure the photographer felt all that he saw and fixed so well.

The vender of Oumi's lily that Margaret Johnson saw, is in Fig. 239. There another is bartering for a spray offlowers, and thus one sold the branch of red maple leaves in our room at the Nara inn. His floral stands are bornealong the streets pendant from the usual carrying pole.

When returning to the city from the Kyoto Experiment Station several fields of Japanese indigo were passed,growing in water under the conditions of ordinary rice culture, Fig. 240 being a view of one of these. The plant isPoligonum tinctoria, a close relative of the smartweed. Before the importation of aniline and alizarin dyes, whichamounted in 1907 to 160,558 pounds and 7,170,320 pounds respectively, the cultivation of indigo was much moreextensive than at present, amounting in 1897 to 160,460,000 pounds of the dried leaves; but in 1906 theproduction had fallen to 58,696,000 pounds, forty−five per cent of which was grown in the prefecture ofTokushima in the eastern part of the island of Shikoku. The population of this prefecture is 707,565, or 4.4 peopleto each of the 159,450 acres of cultivated field, and yet 19,969 of these acres bore the indigo crop, leaving morethan five people to each food−producing acre.

The plants for this crop are started in nursery beds in February and transplanted in May, the first crop being cutthe last of June or first of July, when the fields are again fertilized, the stubble throwing out new shoots andyielding a second cutting the last of August or early September. A crop of barley may have preceded one ofindigo, or the indigo may be set following a crop of rice. Such practice, with the high fertilization for every crop,goes a long way toward supplying the necessary food. The dense population, too, has permitted the manufactureof the indigo as a home industry among the farmers, enabling them to exchange the spare labor of the family forcash. The manufactured product from the reduced planting in 1907 was worth $1,304,610, forty−five per cent ofwhich was the output of the rural population of the prefecture of Tokushima, which they could exchange for riceand other necessaries. The land in rice in this prefecture in 1907 was 73,816 acres, yielding 114,380,000 pounds,or more than 161 pounds to each man, woman and child, and there were 65,665 acres bearing other crops. Besidesthis there are 874,208 acres of mountain and hill land in the prefecture which supply fuel, fuel ashes and greenmanure for fertilizer; run−off water for irrigation; lumber and remunerative employment for service not needed in



the fields.

The journey was continued from Kyoto July 7th, taking the route leading northeastward, skirting lake Biwa whichwe came upon suddenly on emerging from a tunnel as the train left Otani. At many places we passed waterwheelssuch as that seen in Fig. 241, all similarly set, busily turning, and usually twelve to sixteen feet in diameter butoftenest only as many inches thick. Until we had reached Lake Biwa the valleys were narrow with only smallareas in rice. Tea plantations were common on the higher cultivated slopes, and gardens on the terraced hillsidesgrowing vegetables of many kinds were common, often with the ground heavily mulched with straw, while thewooded or grass−covered slopes still further up showed the usual systematic periodic cutting. After passing thewest end of the lake, rice fields were nearly continuous and extensive. Before reaching Hachiman we crossed astream leading into the lake but confined between levees more than twelve feet high, and we had already passedbeneath two raised viaducts after leaving Kusatsu. Other crops were being grown side by side with the rice onsimilar lands and apparently in rotation with it, but on sharp, narrow close ridges twelve to fourteen inches high.As we passed eastward we entered one of the important mulberry districts where the fields are graded to twolevels, the higher occupied with mulberry or other crops not requiring irrigation, while the lower was devoted torice or crops grown in rotation with it.

On the Kisogawa, at the station of the same name, there were four anchored floating water−power mills propelledby two pair of large current wheels stationed fore and aft, each pair working on a common axle from oppositesides of the mill, driven by the force of the current flowing by.

At Kisogawa we had entered the northern end of one of the largest plains of Japan, some thirty miles wide andextending forty miles southward to Owari bay. The plain has been extensively graded to two levels, the benchesbeing usually not more than two feet above the rice paddies, and devoted to various dry land crops, including themulberry. The soil is decidedly sandy in character but the mean yield of rice for the prefecture is 37 bushels peracre and above the average for the country at large. An analysis of the soils at the sub−experiment station north ofNagoya shows the following content of the three main plant food elements.

Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium Pounds per million In paddy fieldSoil 1520 769 805Subsoil 810 756 888 In upland fieldSoil 1060 686 1162Subsoil 510 673 1204

The green manure crops on this plain are chiefly two varieties of the "pink clover," one sowed in the fall and oneabout May 15th, the first yielding as high as sixteen tons green weight per acre and the other from five to eighttons.

On the plain distant from the mountain and hill land the stems of agricultural crops are largely used as fuel and thefuel ashes are applied to the fields at the rate of 10 kan per tan, or 330 pounds per acre, worth $1.20, little lime, assuch, being used.

In the prefecture of Aichi, largely in this plain, with an area of cultivated land equal to about sixteen of ourgovernment townships, there is a population of 1,752,042, or a density of 4.7 per acre, and the number ofhouseholds of farmers was placed at 211,033, thus giving to each farmer's family an average of 1.75 acres, theirchief industries being rice and silk culture.

Soon after leaving the Agricultural Experiment Station of Aichi prefecture at An Jo we crossed the largeYahagigawa, flowing between strong levees above the level of the rice fields. Mulberries, with burdock and other



vegetables were growing upon all of the tables raised one to two, feet above the rice paddies, and these featurescontinued past Okasaki, Koda, and Kamagori, where the hills in many places had been recently cut clean of thelow forest growth and where we passed many large stacks of pine boughs tied in bundles for fuel. After passingGoyu sixty−five miles east from Nagoya, mulberry was the chief crop. Then came a plain country which had beengraded and leveled at great cost of labor, the benches with their square shoulders standing three to four feet abovethe paddy fields; and after passing Toyohashi some distance we were surprised to cross a rather wide section ofcomparatively level land overgrown with pine and herbaceous, plants which had evidently been cut and recutmany times. Beyond Futagawa rice fields were laid out on what appeared to be, similar land but with soil a littlefiner in texture, and still further along were other flat areas not cultivated.

At Maisaka quite half the cultivated fields appear to be in mulberry with ponds of lotus plants in low places, whileat Hamamatsu the rice fields are interspersed with many square−shouldered tables raised three to four feet andoccupied with mulberry or vegetables. As we passed upon the flood plain of the Tenryugawa, with its nearly drybed of coarse gravel half a mile wide, the dwellings of farm villages were, many of them surrounded with nearlysolid, flat−topped, trimmed evergreen hedges nine to twelve feet high, of the umbrella pine, forming beautiful andeffective screens.

At Nakaidzumi we had left the mulberry orchards for those of tea, rice still holding wherever paddies could beformed. Here, too, we met the first fields of tobacco, and at Fukuroi and Homouchi large quantities of importedManchurian bean cake were stacked about the station, having evidently been brought by rail. At Kanaya wepassed through a long tunnel and were in the valley of the Oigawa, crossing the broad, nearly dry stream over abridge of nineteen long spans and were then in the prefecture of Shizuoka where large fields of tea spread far upthe hillsides, covering extensive areas, but after passing the next station, and for seventeen miles before reachingShizuoka we traversed a level stretch of nearly continuous rice fields.

The Shizuoka Experiment Station is devoting special attention to the interests of horticulture, and progress hasalready been made in introducing new fruits of better quality and in improving the native varieties. The nativepears and peaches, as we found them served on the hotel tables in either China or Japan, were not particularlyattractive in either texture or flavor, but we were here permitted to test samples of three varieties of ripe figs offine flavor and texture, one of them as large as a good sized pear. Three varieties of fine peaches were also shown,one unusually large and with delicate deep rose tint, including the flesh. If such peaches could be canned so as toretain their delicate color they would prove very attractive for the table. The flavor and texture of this peach werealso excellent, as was the case with two varieties of pears.

The station was also experimenting with the production of marmalades and we tasted three very excellent brands,two of them lacking the bitter flavor. It would appear that, in Japan, Korea and China there should be a verybright future along the lines of horticultural development, leading to the utilization of the extensive hill lands ofthese countries and the development of a very extensive export trade, both in fresh fruits and marmalades,preserves and the canned forms. They have favorable climatic and soil conditions and great numbers of peoplewith temperament and habits well suited to the industries, as well as an enormous home need which should bemet, in addition to the large possibilities in the direction of a most profitable export trade which would increaseopportunities for labor and bring needed revenue to the people. In Fig. 242 are three views at this station, thelower showing a steep terraced hillside set with oranges and other fruits, holding out a bright promise for thefuture.

Peach orchards were here set on the hill lands, the trees six feet apart each way. They come into bearing in threeyears, remain productive ten to fifteen years, and the returns are 50 to 60 yen per tan, or at the rate of $100 to$120 per acre. The usual fertilizers for a peach orchard are the manure−earth−compost, applied at the rate of 3300pounds per acre, and fish guano applied in rotation and at the same rate.



Shizuoka is one of the large prefectures, having a total area of 3029 square miles; 2090 of which are in forest; 438in pasture and genya land, and 501 square miles cultivated, not quite one−half of which is in paddy fields. Themean yield of paddy rice is nearly 33 bushels per acre. The prefecture has a population of 1,293,470, or about fourto the acre of cultivated field, and the total crop of rice is such as, to provide 236 pounds to each person.

At many places along the way as we left Shizuoka July 10th for Tokyo, farmers were sowing broadcast, on thewater, over their rice fields, some pulverized fertilizer, possibly bean cake. Near the railway station of Fuji, andafter crossing the boulder gravel bed of the Fujikawa which was a full quarter of a mile wide, we were traversinga broad plain of rice paddies with their raised tables, but on them pear orchards were growing, trained to theiroverhead trellises. About. Suduzuka grass was being cut with sickles along the canal dikes for use as greenmanure in the rice fields, which on the left of the railway, stretched eastward more than six miles to beyond Harawhere we passed into a tract of dry land crops consisting of mulberry, tea and various vegetables, with more orless of dry land rice, but we returned to the paddy land again at Numazu, in another four miles. Here there werefour carloads of beef cattle destined for Tokyo or Yokohama, the first we had seen.

It was at this station that the railway turns northward to skirt the eastern flank of the beautiful Fuji−yama, rising tohigher lands of a brown loamy character, showing many large boulders two feet in diameter. Horses were heremoving along the roadways under large saddle loads of green grass, going to the paddy fields from the hills,which in this section are quite free from all but herbaceous growth, well covered and green. Considerable areaswere growing maize and buckwheat, the latter being ground into flour and made into macaroni which is eatenwith chopsticks, Fig. 243, and used to give variety to the diet of rice and naked barley. At Gotenba, where touristsleave the train to ascend Fuji−yama, the road turns eastward again and descends rapidly through many tunnels,crossing the wide gravelly channel of the Sakawagawa, then carrying but little water, like all of the other mainstreams we had crossed, although we were in the rainy season. This was partly because the season was yet not faradvanced; partly because so much water was being taken upon the rice fields, and again because the drainage is sorapid down the steep slopes and comparatively short water courses. Beyond Yamakita the railway again led alonga broad plain set in paddy rice and the hill slopes were terraced and cultivated nearly to their summits.

Swinging strongly southeastward, the coast was reached at Noduz in a hilly country producing chiefly vegetables,mulberry and tobacco, the latter crop being extensively grown eastward nearly to Oiso, beyond which, after a mileof sweet potatoes, squash and cucumbers, there were paddy fields of rice in a flat plain. Before Hiratsuka wasreached the rice paddies were left and the train was crossing a comparatively flat country with a sandy, sometimesgravelly, soil where mulberries, peaches, eggplants, sweet potatoes and dry land rice were interspersed with areasstill occupied with small pine and herbaceous growth or where small pine had been recently set. Similarconditions prevailed after we had crossed the broad channel of the Banyugawa and well toward and beyondFujishiwa where a leveled plain has its tables scattered among the fields of paddy rice, this being the southwestmargin of the Tokyo plain, the largest in Japan, lying in five prefectures, whose aggregate area of 1,739,200 acresof arable lands was worked by 657,235 families of farmers; 661,613 acres of which was in paddy rice, producingannually some 19,198,000 bushels, or 161 pounds for each of the 7,194,045 men, women and children in the fiveprefectures, 1,818,655 of whom were in the capital city, Tokyo.

Three views taken in the eastern portion of this plain in the prefecture of Chiba, July 17th, are seen in Fig. 244, intwo of which shocks of wheat were still standing in the fields among the growing crops, badly weathered and thegrain sprouting as the result of the rainy season. Peanuts, sweet potatoes and millet were the main dry land, cropsthen on the ground, with paddy rice in the flooded basins. Windsor beans, rape, wheat and barley had beenharvested. One family with whom we talked were threshing their wheat. The crop had been a good one and wasyielding between 38.5 and. 41.3 bushels per acre, worth at the time $35 to $40. On the same land this farmersecures a yield of 352 to 361 bushels of potatoes, which at the market price at that time would give a grossearning of $64 to $66 per acre.



Reference has been made to the extensive use of straw in the cultural methods of the Japanese. This is notably thecase in their truck garden work, and two phases of this are shown in Fig. 245. In the lower section of theillustration the garden has been ridged and furrowed for transplanting, the sets have been laid and the rootscovered with a little soil; then, in the middle section, showing the next step in the method, a layer of straw hasbeen pressed firmly above the roots, and in the final step this would be covered with earth. Adopting this methodthe straw is so placed that (1) it acts as an effective mulch without in any way interfering with the capillary rise ofwater to the roots of the sets; (2) it gives deep, thorough aeration of the soil, at the same time allowing rains topenetrate quickly, drawing the air after it; (3) the ash ingredients carried in the straw are leached directly to theroots where they are needed; (4) and finally the straw and soil constitute a compost where the rapid decayliberates plant food gradually and in the place where it will be most readily available. The upper section of theillustration shows rows of eggplants very heavily mulched with coarse straw, the quantity being sufficient to actas a most effective mulch, to largely prevent the development of weeds and to serve during the rainy season as avery material fertilizer.

In growing such dry land crops as barley, beans, buckwheat or dry land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted byplowing or spading, then furrowed deeply where the rows are to be planted. Into these furrows fertilizer is placedand covered with a layer of earth upon which the seed is planted. When the crop is up, if a second fertilization isdesired, a furrow may be made alongside each row, into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered. When thecrop is so far matured that a second may be planted, a new furrow is made, either midway between two others oradjacent to one of them, fertilizer applied and covered with a layer of soil and the seed planted. In this way theleast time possible is lost during the growing season, all of the soil of the field doing duty in crop production.

It was our privilege to visit the Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station at Nishigahara, near Tokyo, which ischarged with the leadership of the general and technical agricultural research work for the Empire. The work isdivided into the sections of agriculture, agricultural chemistry, entomology, vegetable pathology, tobacco,horticulture, stock breeding, soils, and tea manufacture, each with their laboratory equipment and research staff,while the forty−one prefectural stations and fourteen sub−stations are charged with the duty of handling allspecific local, practical problems and with testing out and applying conclusions and methods suggested by theresults obtained at the central station, together with the local dissemination of knowledge among the farmers ofthe respective prefectures.

A comprehensive soil survey of the arable lands of the Empire has been in progress since before 1893, excellentmaps being issued on a scale of 1 to 100,000, or about 1.57 inch−to the mile, showing the geological formationsin eight colors with subdivisions indicated by letters. Some eleven soil types are recognized, based on physicalcomposition and the areas occupied by these are shown by means of lines and dots in black printed over thecolors. Typical profiles of the soil to depths of three meters are printed as insets on each sheet and localities wherethese apply are indicated by corresponding numbers in red on the map.

Elaborate chemical and physical studies are also being made in the laboratories of samples of both soil andsubsoil. The Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station is well equipped for investigation work along many linesand that for soils is notably strong. In Fig. 246 may be seen a portion of the large immersed cylinders which arefilled with typical soils from different parts of the Empire, and Fig. 247 shows a portion of another part of theirelaborate outfit for soil studies which are in progress.

It is found that nearly all cultivated soils of Japan are acid to litmus, and this they are inclined to attribute to thepresence of acid hydro−aluminum silicates.

The Island Empire of Japan stretches along the Asiatic coast through more than twenty−nine degrees of latitudefrom the southern extremity of Formosa northward to the middle of Saghalin, some 2300 statute miles; or fromthe latitude of middle Cuba to that of north Newfoundland and Winnipeg; but the total land area is only 175,428square miles, and less than that of the three states of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Of this total land area only



23,698 square miles are at present cultivated; 7151 square miles in the three main islands are weed and pastureland. Less than fourteen per cent of the entire land area is at present under cultivation.

If all lands having a slope of less than fifteen degrees may be tilled, there yet remain in the four main islands,15,400 square miles to bring under cultivation, which is an addition of 65.4 per cent to the land already cultivated.

In 1907 there were in the Empire some 5,814,362 households of farmers tilling 15,201,969 acres and feeding3,522,877 additional households, or 51,742,398 people. This is an average of 3.4 people to the acre of cultivatedland, each farmer's household tilling an average of 2.6 acres.

The lands yet to be reclaimed are being put under cultivation rapidly, the amount improved in 1907 being 64,448acres. If the new lands to be reclaimed can be made as productive as those now in use there should be opportunityfor an increase in population to the extent of about 35,000,000 without changing the present ratio of 3.4 people tothe acre of cultivated land.

While the remaining lands to be reclaimed are not as inherently productive as those now in use, improvements inmanagement will more than compensate for this, and the Empire is certain to quite double its present maintenancecapacity and provide for at least a hundred million people with many more comforts of home and moresatisfaction for the common people than they now enjoy.

Since 1872 there has been an increase in the population of Japan amounting to an annual average of about 1.1 percent, and if this rate is maintained the one hundred million mark would be passed in less than sixty years. Itappears probable however that the increased acreage put under cultivation and pasturage combined, will morethan keep pace with the population up to this limit, while the improvement in methods and crops will readilypermit a second like increment to her population, bringing that for the present Empire up to 150 millions. Againstthis view, perhaps, is the fact that the rice crop of the twenty years ending in 1906 is only thirty−three per centgreater than the crop of 1838.

In Japan, as in the United States, there has been a strong movement from the country to the city as a natural resultof the large increase in manufactures and commerce, and the small amount of land per each farmer's household. In1903 only .23 per cent of the population of Japan were living in villages of less than 500, while 79.06 per centwere in towns and villages of less than 10,000 people, 20.7 per cent living in those larger. But in 1894 84.36 percent of the population were living in towns and villages of less than 10,000, and only 15.64 per cent were in cities,towns and villages of over 10,000 people; and while during these ten years the rural population had increased atthe rate of 640 per 10,000, in cities the increase had been 6,174 per 10,000.

Japan has been and still is essentially an agricultural nation and in 1906 there were 3,872,105 farmers' households,whose chief work was farming, and 1,581,204 others whose subsidiary work was farming, or 60.2 per cent of theentire number of households. A like ratio holds in Formosa. Wealthy land owners who do not till their own fieldsare not included.

Of the farmers in Japan some 33.34 per cent own and work their land. Those having smaller holdings, who rentadditional land, make up 46.03 per cent of the total farmers; while 20.63 per cent are tenants who work 44.1 percent of the land. In 1892 only one per cent of the land holders owned more than twenty−five acres each; thoseholding between twenty−five acres and five acres made up 11.7 per cent; while 87.3 per cent held less than fiveacres each. A man owning seventy−five acres of land in Japan is counted among the "great landholders". It isnever true, however, except in the Hokkaido, which is a new country agriculturally, that such holdings lie in onebody.

Statistics published in "Agriculture in Japan", by the Agricultural Bureau, Department of Agriculture andCommerce, permit the following statements of rent, crop returns, taxes and expenses, to be made. The wealthy



land owners who rent their lands receive returns like these:

For paddy field, For upland field, per acre. per acre.Rent $27.98 $13.53Taxes 7.34 1.98Expenses 1.72 2.48Total expenses $9.06 $4.46Net profit 18.92 9.07

It is stated, in connection with these statistics, that the rate of profit for land capital is 5.6 per cent for the paddyfield, and 5.7 per cent for the upland field. This makes the valuation of the land about $338 and $159 per acre,respectively. A land holder who owns and rents ten acres of paddy field and ten acres of upland field would, atthese rates, realize a net annual income of $279.90.

Peasant farmers who own and work their lands receive per acre an income as follows:

For paddy field, For upland field, per acre. per acre.Crop returns $55.00 $30.72Taxes 7.34 1.98Labor and expenses 36.20 24.00 −−−−−−− −−−−−−−Total expense $43.54 $25.98Net profit 11.46 4.74

The peasant farmer who owns and works five acres, 2.5 of paddy and 2.5 of upland field, would realize a total netincome of $40.50. This is after deducting the price of his labor. With that included, his income would besomething like $91.

Tenant farmers who work some 41 per cent of the farm lands of Japan, would have accounts something asfollows:

For paddy field, For upland field, 1 crop. 2 crops. per acre. per acre.Crop returns $49.03 $78.62 $41.36Tenant fee 23.89 31.58 13.52Labor 15.78 25.79 14.69Fertilization 7.82 17.30 10.22Seed .82 1.40 1.57Other expenses 1.69 2.82 1.66 −−−−−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−Total expenses $50.00 $78.89 $41.66Net profit −−.97 −−.27 −−.30

This statement indicates that tenant farmers do not realize enough from the crops to quite cover expenses and theprice named for their labor. If the tenant were renting five acres, equally divided between paddy and upland field,the earning would be $73.00 or $99.73 according as one or two crops are taken from the paddy field, thisrepresenting what he realizes on his labor, his other expenses absorbing the balance of the crop value.

But the average area tilled by each Japanese farmer's household is only 2.6 acres, hence the average earning of thetenant household would be $37.95 or $51.86. A clearer view of the difference in the present condition of farmersin Japan and of those in the United States may be gained by making the Japanese statement on the basis of our160−acre farm, as expressed in the table below:



For paddy field. For upland field. Total. For 80 acres. For 80 acres. 160 acres.Crop returns $4,400.00 $2,457.60 $6,857.60 −−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−−−−Taxes $587.20 $158.40 $745.60Expenses 1,633.60 744.80 2,378.40Labor 1,262.40 1,175.20 2,437.60 −−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−−−− Total cost $3,488.20 $2,078.40 $5,561.60Net return 916.80 379.20 1,296.00Return including labor 2,179.20 1,554.40 3,783.60

In the United States the 160−acre farm is managed by and supports a single family, but in Japan, as the averagehousehold works but 2.6 acres, the earnings of the 160 acres are distributed among some 61 households, makingthe net return to each but $21.25, instead of $1296, and including the labor as earning, the income would be$39.96 more, or $60.67 per household instead of $3733.60, the total for a 160−acre farm worked under Japaneseconditions.

These figures reveal something of the tense strain and of the terrible burden which is being carried by thesepeople, over and above that required for the maintenance of the household. The tenant who raises one crop of ricepays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he raises two crops he pays $31.58; if it is upland field, he pays $13.52. Tothese amounts he adds $10.33, $21.52 or $13.45 respectively for fertilizer, seed and other expenses making a totalinvestment of $34.22, $53.10 or $26.97 per acre, which would require as many bushels of wheat sold at a dollar abushel to cover this cost. In addition to this he assumes all the risks of loss from weather, from insects and fromblight, in the hope that he may recoup his expenses and in addition have for his services $14.81, $25.52 or $14.39for the season's work.

The burdens of society, which have been and still are so largely burdens of war and of government, with allnations, are reflected with almost blinding effect in the land taxes of Japan, which range from $1.98, on theupland, to $7.34 per acre on the paddy fields, making a quarter section, without buildings, carry a burden of $300to $1100 annually. Japan's budget in 1907 was $134,941,113, which is at the rate of $2.60 for each man, womanand child; $8.90 for each acre of cultivated land, and $23, for each household in the Empire. When such is thecase it is not strange that scenes like Fig. 248 are common in Japan today where, after seventy years, toil may notcease.

There is a bright, as well as a pathetic side to scenes like this. The two have shared for fifty years, but if the dayshave been full of toil, with them have come strength of body, of mind and sterling character. If the burdens havebeen heavy, each has made the other's lighter, the satisfaction fuller, the joys keener, the sorrows less difficult tobear; and the children who came into the home and have gone from it to perpetuate new ones, could not well beother than such as to contribute to the foundations of nations of great strength and long endurance.

Reference has been made to the large amount of work carried on in the farmers' households by the women andchildren, and by the men when they are not otherwise employed, and the earnings of this subsidiary work havematerially helped to piece out the meagre income and to meet the relatively high taxes and rent.



Documents

Farmers of Forty Centuries...these oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty We desired to learn how it is possible,